


Jagged

by madsthenerdygirl



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, F/M, Falling for the Mark, Gaslighting, Heavy Angst, Jess's Hair is So Big Because It's Full of Secrets, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multi, Please Form an Orderly Line to Yell at Me, This is NOT a fun fic, Unhealthy Relationship that Becomes Healthier, Unhealthy Relationships, sibling dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-05-24 17:38:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 24,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14959079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/pseuds/madsthenerdygirl
Summary: Rittenhouse has a new leader. And a new strategy.Or,Maybe it doesn’t matter how broken the pieces are, so long as they fit together.





	1. Chapter 1

Amy stood there, feeling her heart plummet. Lucy was sitting at the kitchen table, papers strewn out in front of her, a cup of tea in her hands—both now forgotten.

She felt as though her legs might give out. “But—you quit smoking ages ago.”

She glanced at Lucy, at her older sister’s angry brown eyes. Of course, Lucy would never say anything. And Dad had been a good man, one they’d loved and lost just a few years ago. But it was true, he was the one who’d gotten Mom into cigarettes, the ones Mom had smoked like a chimney for two decades.

Amy and Lucy had banded together to get them both to quit, but apparently, it just hadn’t been soon enough.

“It’s a fifty-fifty chance, the doctors say,” Mom said. She was trying to be brave, Amy could see it in her eyes. She’d gotten Mom’s eyes, and hair, and Mom’s personality—but Lucy had gotten the love of history. Perhaps that was why Mom tended to be more indulgent towards Lucy, more patient. Or it could be that Amy and Mom were just too much alike.

“I’ll have the best care,” Mom went on. “We have the money for it, and the insurance. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Amy could see right through that lie. But she suspected that Mom was saying it more for herself than for her daughters—Amy was a realist and Lucy was a fan of being able to brace for whatever storm was coming her way.

“We’ll help,” Lucy said quickly. “I mean, the university’s not too far, I can move back in…”

Amy stared at Lucy, silently telling her _are you crazy?_ Lucy had just moved into her new apartment. Amy already lived at home. Lucy’s independence was hard-won, she wasn’t going to let her give that up just because Mom was sick.

Okay, Mom getting sick was a big deal. But surely Amy could take care of it on her own and with Lucy coming by to help out when she could, right?

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I can take care of Mom. You don’t have to move back in.”

“But Amy—”

“We don’t have to decide anything now,” Mom said gently. “But it warms my heart to see how you two…”

Oh no, Mom was starting to cry. Lucy jumped up and Amy immediately stepped to the side so they could both hug Mom at once.

“It’s gonna be okay, Mama,” she said, and Lucy nodded.

“You must be exhausted,” Lucy said. “I’ll put on a movie? Maybe a classic? _The Shop Around the Corner_?”

Mom and Lucy were both huge fans of black and white films. When Lucy’d had a bad day, Amy could guarantee that _It Happened One Night_ would be playing in the living room while Lucy ate a pint of Ben  & Jerry’s and sipped a beer.

“I’ll make us something to eat,” Amy said. Lucy couldn’t cook for shit but Amy had always enjoyed it, though she was never going to submit herself for a cooking competition or anything. “One of your favorites? I can run out to the store, get stuff for that sun dried tomato roast chicken you love.”

Mom kissed them both each on the top of the head. “My girls. You know you’re everything to me, right? Everything.”

Amy thought there was something significant in Mom’s tone. Like there was something her mom was referring to that she wasn’t understanding.

But it didn’t really matter. Mom needed them. Mom, the pillar of strength, the one who’d pushed Lucy into being the amazing teacher she was, the one who’d always expected nothing but excellence from both herself and those around her, Mom who once got into a fist fight with another mom in the PTA because the other woman’s kid had been bullying Amy.

Her mother needed her.

And Amy was going to be there.


	2. Chapter 2

Six months later, and Amy was wondering how it was that a human body could undergo so many changes in so short a time.

The once-vibrant Carol Preston was a withered shell of herself. Hooked up to life support at home because they could afford it and she insisted on being at home for this.

This.

That was what everyone called it, as if saying the word ‘cancer’ was going to make it stronger, like it was Voldemort or something.

“If I’m going to die,” Mom had coughed out at one point, “I’m going to do it at home and not in a hospital.”

That was absurdly important to Mom. She wanted to be at home with her girls, in the room she’d lived in with her husband for their many years of marriage. Happy marriage, too. Mom had loved Dad, and Dad had worshipped the ground she walked on.

Now Amy sat at the edge of the master bed, one side of it depressingly empty, while Mom was hooked up to the other side.

“You need anything?” she asked softly.

Mom’s eyes slid open, taking Amy in. “No, I’m okay. Where’s Lucy?”

“She’s got that night lecture, remember?” Lucy had taken on the night lecturing post, one that all the professors hated, in order to improve her bid for tenure. Amy hoped she got it, but she was worried—Lucy wasn’t really fighting for it the way that she should. Amy’d been telling her to really get in there, to take the bull by the horns, but that had never been Lucy’s style.

“Oh, yes.” Mom’s eyes slipped closed again. “Right. You can just turn off the light.”

“All right. Shall I tell Lucy you want her to sleep with you tonight?”

“Please.”

Mom liked it when Lucy took the other side of the bed. She just liked having Lucy near.

Amy didn’t know why she didn’t do just as well. Sometimes she wanted to curl up with her mom, too. But then, Lucy had always been the favorite.

Amy turned off the lights and closed the door softly, moving through the house in her socks, avoiding the creaking floorboards. In the past six months, her childhood home had gone from a warm and cozy place to what felt like a living tomb.

Lucy refused to give up, but Amy was different. She knew the truth—Mom was dying.

She slipped on her shoes and her jacket. She had to get out of this damn house. She’d had to quit her job which, sure, they could afford it. Dad had been loaded and so had Mom, family money she’d said. But there went Amy’s career, at least for now. She was stuck in this house day in and day out, only leaving to take Mom to her appointments or to get groceries or something, and then right back into the house again.

She knew it was selfish, but dammit, she had to be selfish every now and again didn’t she? Lucy would be home soon. And the bar was just down the street.

Amy was going out.

 

* * *

 

The bar was quiet tonight, which made sense, seeing as it was Wednesday. There were some guys on one end watching a football game, and a couple others in one of the corner booths.

Amy slid up to the bar top and hopped onto a stool, thunking her head down on the bar top. God, she was so exhausted. It felt like she’d been exhausted for six months.

“Bad day?” someone asked.

Amy’s head jerked up in surprise, looking up into an amused face with blonde hair and warm, knowing dark eyes. The bartender was a woman.

She then immediately felt bad for being surprised the bartender was a woman.

A very pretty woman too, actually. Wow. Those were some arms.

“Bad month,” Amy replied.

The woman laughed. “I feel that. What can I get you?”

“Surprise me.”

“Mmm, a dangerous proposition,” the woman said, bracing her hands on the bar and leaning in. Wow. Those were some boobs. “You just met me, how can you trust I’ll give you something you’ll like?”

“You’re a bartender, I bet you’ve gotten used to figuring out what people want.”

The woman snorted, amused. “All right then, Miss…” She arched an eyebrow.

“Amy.”

The woman stuck her hand over the counter. “Jess.”

Amy shook it, smiling back helplessly when Jess smiled at her. “All right, how about some whiskey?” Jess suggested. “It’s the Texan in me coming out but when I’ve had a bad day, there’s nothing better.”

“I’ll take it.”

Jess poured her a shot. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“It’s the usual sob story,” Amy replied. She didn’t want to just dump all of her shit on a stranger.

“Broken heart?” Jess guessed sympathetically.

“Oh, God no,” Amy said, laughing self-deprecatingly. As if she’d had time to date anyone with taking care of Mom. “It’s, uh, my mom has cancer. That kind of sob story.”

“Oh my God,” Jess said, setting down the bottle. “I’m so sorry.”

Amy shrugged. “You know, I’ve had time to get used to it. The most annoying thing is how my sister thinks she’s still going to be okay and anyone can see that she’s not going to be okay, and we need to start planning for it, and we… we need to…”

She wiped quickly at her eyes, refusing to cry in front of a stranger.

“Hey, hey,” Jess said, quickly pulling a napkin out from behind the bar and passing it to her. “I know, it’s hard. I lost my brother when I was just a kid. It’s hard.”

Amy nodded. “I’m sorry, I—I just haven’t said it out loud, you know? Everyone’s being so damn optimistic and I just want to scream.”

Jess glanced at the other patrons over at the far end, who were grumbling about the outcome of the game.

“Well, it’s not busy,” Jess said slowly, “and this is the kind of whiskey you want to savor. How about you tell me everything?”

She really did look understanding, and she was damn pretty, and had these big warm eyes, and Amy hadn’t talked to anyone about anything in what felt so long…

So she did. She told Jess everything.


	3. Chapter 3

She didn’t mean for it to become a habit.

It was just that she was so lonely. She didn’t really have time to go out with friends and she couldn’t really invite anyone to the house because then they might disturb Mom or Mom might need her. Lucy was running herself ragged trying to get tenure, and Mom was just steadily getting worse, and Amy didn’t even have a damn job to distract her.

She’d almost take working in retail again.

Almost.

But the bar was just down the street and she could literally run home in five minutes if something was wrong. Lucy didn’t even seem to notice that Amy now had a regular spot that she went to. Not that Lucy was obligated to notice Amy’s little outings or anything. And after the first few times that Lucy just hadn’t realized, Amy had started taking pains to make sure that Lucy _wouldn’t_ realize.

And every Wednesday, she went to see Jess.

She didn’t know how to say it, but Jess was quickly becoming the highlight of Amy’s week. Maybe even the highlight of her entire stupid life.

Amy knew she wasn’t one of those people who was destined for greatness. She was all right at school, mostly because she just hadn’t cared enough to really try. She had never had any strong passions in life. Nothing that she wanted to pursue. She liked helping people and had entertained the idea of being a social worker at one point. But nothing had ever really stuck.

Jess, though—Jess seemed to get it. “I went from a small town in Texas to being a bartender, not exactly something they write Hollywood movies about.”

Jess was funny, with a dry sense of humor and this crooked little smile that made Amy’s heart flip. She had a way of looking at the bright side of things without sounding patronizing, and she told it like it was.

If only Amy had any idea how to tell her that she thought Jess was the cutest goddamn thing she’d ever seen.

But she didn’t, so instead she just kept showing up every Wednesday to moan about her life while Jess patiently listened.

“I mean, I get it,” Amy said. “It’s not like she’s going out partying every night, y’know, she’s trying to get job security which we really fuckin’ need because we’ve got family money—and Mom has never told me where that comes from but anyway, just another one of Mom’s secrets, God for _bid_ she tell us anything straight up—and so like she’s looking out for the family, y’know.

“But God, would it kill her to come home early for once? I’d like to see you more than once a week you know. Or even do something like go and see a movie in theaters. God, do you know how long it’s been since I went to the movie theater? I’ll tell you how long: I don’t even remember. That’s how long.”

Jess shook her head, smiling at her as she took her glass away. “I think you’ve had enough for the night, sweetheart.”

 _Sweetheart_. It was little things like that, those little endearments, that gave Amy hope.

“Have you talked to Lucy about this?” Jess asked, shelving some bottles. “If you told her how you feel, I’m sure she’d listen.”

“Nah, I haven’t… this is our thing.”

Jess gave her an odd look. “You haven’t told your sister that you go out to a bar every Wednesday.”

“I’m an adult, why shouldn’t I?”

Jess shrugged. “Nothing.”

But Amy knew the look on Jess’s face by now. “Spit it out.”

Jess sighed, her hands on her hips. “I know it’s nothing. It’s just that keeping secrets about my social life from my husband… that was one of the big signs that I knew it was time to get out.”

Wyatt Logan, Jess’s ex-husband, was going to get his goddamn jaw broken by Amy if he ever made the mistake of crossing her path. Jess had told Amy about him: her high school sweetheart, jealous, possessive, borderline alcoholic.

“I care about him,” Jess had told her once. “He’s a good man, deep down. He just had a hard childhood.”

“That doesn’t excuse what he did as an adult,” Amy had shot back.

Jess had shrugged. “I just hope he gets the help he needs, honestly.”

Now Amy was staring at Jess, her mouth a little open. Maybe she had had too much to drink. “Are you saying Lucy’s…”

“No, no! God no.” Jess shook her head. “I’m just saying, maybe because of your mom… cancer really changes relationship dynamics. I remember reading once, this guy had cancer, and he said that it either makes or breaks your marriage. I think it can be the same with other relationships too, right? I mean, I’m no psychologist. But I think you’re both letting this whole… thing… I don’t know. I just think it’s unhealthy that you make a friend and your first instinct is not to tell your sister.”

Amy wanted to protest that it wasn’t her _first_ instinct… but then again, she hadn’t gone out of her way to tell Lucy, either.

Once upon a time, her first action upon meeting a cute possibly-flirtatious girl would’ve been to tell Lucy. Now, she’d avoided it and then had actively decided against telling her.

Maybe Jess was onto something.

 

* * *

 

She tried not to get drunk in case Mom needed her, but sometimes, she did get tipsy.

“I just don’t get it,” she ranted, her voice hushed so she wouldn’t disturb anybody. “Like, why am I not good enough? Mom’s always liked Lucy best. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. Lucy’s gonna get her PhD. Lucy’s gonna graduate with highest honors. Lucy’s gonna go to an Ivy League. Lucy’s gonna be the best. Oh, Lucy, you’re so pretty, oh, Lucy, you’re so smart.”

Jess frowned, pouring a glass for another patron. “And what has Lucy done about this?”

Amy frowned. Jess looked just the littlest bit blurry around the edges but her eyes were dark and wide and so very pretty. “Was Lucy supposed to do something?”

Jess shrugged, handing the glass off. “Stand up for you. Not let your mom ignore you. Be a good big sister.”

“She is a good big sister.” Wasn’t she?

Jess gently tucked some stray hair behind Amy’s ear. “I know you think that, sweetheart.”

 

* * *

 

“You know I never told Mom I like women?”

Jess paused in counting the till. “Exclusively?”

“I mean, guys are okay. I’ve gone out with a few. I just prefer women.” Amy shrugged. She hadn’t had much to drink that night, just one beer. She’d felt too tired to get drunk, if that made any sense. She wasn’t sure that it did.

Then again, it felt like her whole life didn’t make sense. Like she was floating in limbo, waiting for something.

“Why haven’t you told her?” Jess asked.

“She wouldn’t like it.” Amy idly traced the initials that someone had carved into the bar top. “She says she’s fine with it. But it’s for other people. We’re supposed to give her grandkids. Marry doctors. Y’know?”

“Does Lucy know?”

Amy snorted. “Ohhhh yeah. In college, Lucy dated three girls in a row. She’s a massive sub when it comes to women, just like me.” She stared at her beer. “I could’ve sworn I’d only had one of these.”

“You did, you’re just tired.” Jess took the empty bottle from her and set it aside. “You’ve been working yourself too hard. Can’t Lucy help?”

“She’s got…”

“Tenure, yeah, I know. It’s not an excuse.”

Jess ran her hand through Amy’s hair. “I want you to take care of yourself too, mmkay? You can’t go looking after your sister and mom all the time. They’ve got to take care of you too. And if they’re not, then I’m gonna have to have a word with them.”

Amy snorted. The idea of the Righteous Fury of Jess coming down to smite Mom was hilarious. “Lucy’s trying.”

It didn’t sound as real as it had a few months ago.

Jess sighed, kissed the top of Amy’s head, then put the money back in the till. “C’mon, I’m just closing up here. I’ll walk you home.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Amy confessed. “You’re my only friend.”

“You really have to stop saying such depressing things,” Jess said. “Honestly. You know it’s not right to be so isolated? Lucy should be making sure you can see your friends too. Only getting to be in that house, with only your mom and your sister, it’s toxic.”

“Lucy and Mom don’t—they don’t mean to be. If they are.”

“Wyatt didn’t know he was being a possessive asshole half the time, and yet.” Jess shrugged, wiping up the bar top. “Abusive people don’t always know they’re abusive. Often, it’s just all they know. Wyatt learned it from his dad. Did your Mom have a bad relationship with her parents?”

“I don’t know. She left her family when she met Dad. We don’t know anything about them. She doesn’t talk about it.”

Jess stared at her disbelievingly. “Babe, you know that’s like, five red flags, right?”

Amy shrugged. She was too tired to think about it right now. “I just want to go home,” she said in a small voice. “And I want my mom to not be sick.”

“Oh, babe, hey.” Jess walked around the bar top to pull Amy into her arms, hugging her. “It’s gonna be okay. I’ll walk you home. And if your mom is anything like me she’s a trooper, yeah? It’ll all be okay.”

“But what if it isn’t okay?” Amy whispered.

She felt a kiss to the top of her head. “Then I’ll still be here.”

That sounded nice.


	4. Chapter 4

Things came to a head, at least with Jess, when Lucy just up and fucking vanished.

It was a bad day all around. Amy was at the end of her goddamn rope, Mom was barely awake half the time, and Lucy had just found out that one of her colleagues had gotten her tenure meeting cancelled.

Then Lucy was rushed out the door and apologizing and just… didn’t come home.

Amy waited until midnight, but there was no sign of Lucy or why she’d been escorted to who the fuck knew where. Not even a text or a phone call to let Amy know that she was okay.

She’d been trying not to believe it when Jess would point out that Lucy was taking advantage of Amy. That Mom clearly favored Lucy and had let Amy fall to the wayside. That her family took her for granted.

But was it really beyond her sister to let her know what the fuck was happening? Lucy could’ve been murdered by the side of the road for all that Amy knew.

It felt for the first time like maybe Jess was right. Maybe Lucy just didn’t care about Amy as much as Amy wanted her to care, as much as Amy had always cared about her, her hero older sister.

And so she got spectacularly drunk.

She didn’t even go to the bar. She stole one of Lucy’s vodka bottles, the one hidden in the top shelf over the oven, the one that nobody was supposed to know about.

It was on her third (fourth?) glass that she thought, hey. It had been a long time since she’d done something for herself. And that included sex.

And she knew just who she wanted to have sex with.

It was just after last call when she sauntered (stumbled) into the bar. Jess had her back to her but turned around upon hearing Amy enter.

“Hey, babe, it’s not Wed…” Jess’s voice trailed off. “Are you drunk?”

“Plastered,” Amy assured her, and then she walked around the bar, pinned Jess to the counter, and kissed her.

It was not the finest kiss that she had ever given. Her tongue wasn’t really cooperating at the moment. And Jess sort of stood there frozen in shock for a second. But then Amy let out this involuntary little whine because come _on_ why wasn’t Jess moving and she just wanted to kiss her so bad and had for weeks and weeks—

And then Jess was moving, was kissing her back, and fuck that felt good, that felt so good. Amy spread her legs and kept trying to—her hands were really clumsy right now, she was _trying_ to get them under Jess’s stupid black tank top, why was she always wearing black tank tops, and Jess’s hands were in her hair and she kissed so good and she wanted—

Jess’s hands tightened in her hair, using her grip to pull Amy back, pull her away. “Whoa, Amy…”

Amy whined. She knew she was pouting and probably looked like a petulant five-year-old. “Jess, c’mon, please.”

“You’re drunk, you don’t even know what you want right now.”

“I want you to fuck me,” Amy replied. She didn’t know what else she wanted out of her life, couldn’t have anything else, but please, couldn’t she have this? “Jess, please, I’ve wanted you to fuck me for so long, please…”

Jess’s eyes were dark and sad, but her voice was firm. “No. You’re drunk.”

“That doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I’m doing.” Amy tried to step closer again but Jess shoved her back, literally shoved her, making Amy stumble and nearly hit the back wall.

Jess sighed, folding her arms. “No means no, Amy.”

To her utter horror, Amy felt herself starting to cry.

That melted Jess immediately. She walked over, pulling Amy into her arms for a hug. She rubbed her back softly. “We’re not doing this while you’re drunk and angry. I’m not putting up with that again. But if you really want this, you can come back when you’re sober. Okay?”

Amy nodded into Jess’s shoulder. “Lucy’s gone. They—they took her and she’s gone and she won’t call me and—and I’m stuck at home and I have no friends and no job and she doesn’t care, my own sister doesn’t—doesn’t c-care…”

“I know, baby, I know. She doesn’t deserve you.” Jess’s voice was soothing, like she was talking to a small child. She kept rubbing Amy’s back. “Nobody sees you. Nobody appreciates you. But I do, okay? I’m here. I see you. I know how hard you’re working, I know. You deserve so much better than this.”

“I do.” Amy hadn’t ever said that out loud before. “I do deserve better.”

“That’s right, sweetheart.”

Jess pulled away, cupping Amy’s face in her hands. “Go home and sleep this off, okay?”

Amy nodded, feeling miserable and rejected and empty. “Okay.”

She barely remembered stumbling back home, but when she woke up, Lucy was sitting by her bed. “Everything okay?”

Lucy sat there for a long moment, then reached over and hugged her tightly.

Amy was startled. “Luce—are you crying?”

Lucy just hugged her tighter. “I love you,” she blurted out. “I love you so much, okay Ames?”

“…okay.”

Whatever had happened to Lucy last night, she wouldn’t talk about it. But she stayed by Amy’s side all day, and kept looking panicked whenever Amy would disappear from her line of sight.

And Jess…

Amy couldn’t go back there. Not after how she’d behaved. Not when she’d made such an idiot of herself. Jess had turned her down and hadn't even really kissed her back and she'd messed up the one friendship she had and now Jess was going to want to let her down gently and she couldn't go through that, not now.

She just couldn’t.


	5. Chapter 5

It took a month for Amy to get up the courage to go and see Jess again.

It was partly because of Lucy.

Her sister had taken to disappearing at all hours and coming back… different. She’d often rush home and tear through history books. One time, she’d had a book open in her lap, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and had just been sobbing over it like the end of the world had come.

Another time she came home, read a book on Charles Lindbergh, and then threw the book against the wall in a rage.

Amy couldn’t understand it. And Lucy wouldn’t tell her.

“Where are you going?” she’d ask.

“What’s wrong?”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

But Lucy wouldn’t ever tell her jack shit.

It made Amy want to throw a book or two herself. Something was up but she had no idea what it could possibly be, and she didn’t know who else to talk to about it.

But first, she had to apologize.

Her heart was beating in her throat and her stomach was flipping and twisting as she entered the bar. She made sure to do it at last call, so that she wouldn’t take Jess away from other customers.

Jess turned, not looking at her. “We’re closed.”

Amy cleared her throat. “Hi.”

Jess froze and looked up.

Out of all the reactions that Amy was expecting, having Jess walk over and hug her tightly was not one of them.

“You’re okay,” Jess breathed in relief, stepping back and clutching Amy’s shoulders. She looked her over. “Where have you been? Is your mom okay?”

“She’s hanging in there.”

“I thought…” Jess shook her head. “Never mind. What took you so long?”

“I…” Amy fumbled for words. “I thought you wouldn’t want me to come back.”

“What?” Jess looked appalled. “No. No, I just—you were drunk, Amy. You shouldn’t make any kind of decision like that when you’re that wasted. I thought you were going to throw up or fall over.”

“I might have.” She was still surprised that she’d made it back to the house that night in one piece. “I was real messed up.”

“Because of Lucy.”

Amy felt an odd, tingling sensation at the base of her spine. “Yeah. Lucy was gone with no explanation. She’s been doing that a lot lately. She won’t tell me why. She never tells me how long she’ll be gone. And it’s at all hours.”

“Maybe she’s seeing someone?” Jess suggested.

“Lucy? Dating? Not when Mom’s sick.”

“But she’s not around, and your mom is sick. What could be more important than your dying mother?” Jess sounded unusually harsh, angry.

Amy frowned. Lucy had actually—okay, so she wouldn’t tell Amy jack shit. But she’d been a lot more careful around Amy lately. More thoughtful. She was telling Amy that she loved her and asking how Amy’s day was. She hadn’t been doing that before.

“Why do you care so much?” Amy couldn’t explain the strange feeling of suspicion churning in her gut, but it was there. “Why does it matter so much to you that I’m angry at my sister?”

“Because you have a right to be angry. You have a right to stand up for yourself. And when you’re being treated badly I want you to recognize it.”

“Why?” Amy pushed.

For the first time since she’d met her, Jess looked wrong-footed, her eyes going a little wide. “Because—oh fuck it.”

And then she was the one pressing Amy against the counter.

Her mouth was on Amy’s before Amy could even process that she was being moved. She dropped her mouth open instinctively, and Jess’s tongue slid in, rough, possessive. Amy moaned.

“That’s it,” Jess told her, kissing her over and over again, fierce and messy. “Moan for me, baby, just like that.”

Amy did, she’d do whatever Jess wanted so long as Jess kept kissing her and hoisting her up onto the bar top and shoving her legs open and oh fuck, oh _fuck_.

She yanked and tugged at Jess’s clothes, trying to get them off, but it was hard to concentrate when Jess’s nimble fingers were undoing her pants and literally ripping her flannel shirt open and she was kissing down Amy’s stomach and shoving her pants down and oh, oh God—

Jess took Amy’s wrists in her hands and set them down on the bar top, pinning them. Amy panted, staring down wide-eyed as Jess licked her way up Amy’s thighs.

“Wanted this for so long…” Jess murmured, kissing right over her clit before sliding her tongue through her folds.

Amy tossed her head back, clenching her teeth and letting out a low whine. “I—how—when did you get so good at this?”

A strange sort of shadow passed over Jess’s face. “Recently.”

Amy wanted to ask what that meant, what story was in Jess’s eyes, but then Jess was licking and sucking at her clit and oh fuck, coherent thought went right out the window.

It felt a little like being in college again, getting eaten out on a filthy bar where anyone could walk in and see them. But she didn’t care. She’d dreamed about this for months now and Jess looked so incredibly hot and she was pinning Amy down because Amy had once said she was a sub for women and Jess had _remembered_ and Jess _cared_ and it felt so so so good…

Amy’s hips bucked up and she nearly fell off the counter as she came, roaring in her ears and spilling all over Jess’s face.

Jess just wiped at her mouth, grinning up at her. “The things I want to do to you,” she admitted, her voice low and a bit throaty.

Amy panted, trying to get her brain to come back online. “Show me,” she demanded.

Jess did.


	6. Chapter 6

If a gun was put to her head and she was asked who was easiest to sleep with, Jess would have said Wyatt.

Wyatt, bless his stupid puppy heart, never even dreamed that she’d be double crossing him. He was possessive and easily jealous and had a fuckton of toxic masculinity but God, he loved her. There were literal fucking stars in his eyes when he looked up at her, his ear on her stomach.

It was easy to sleep with someone who was in love with you.

It was easy when you still kind of loved them back.

But it was hard, too. Stuck in the middle. Wondering, did she love him? If so, did she love him more or less than she loved the version of him she’d grown up with? Because the Wyatt of the last few months had not been the Wyatt that she’d known. Whatever messed-up shit he was doing with Lucy was a whole other can of worms but with her he was gentle, thoughtful, giving in a way that he hadn’t been since senior year of high school.

Was she really so starved for no-strings-attached affection, love without hidden agendas, that she’d fall for anyone who gave it to her?

Sleeping with Emma, on the other hand, was also easy.

The woman was clearly starved for some good affection of her own. Everyone and their mother could see that she and Nicholas had been trying to play each other like dueling pianos.

When Emma had shot Carol and Nicholas, Jess had quickly seen how the status quo was changing. And she’d had one mission:

Stay on top.

All families were dysfunctional, she told herself. All families had power plays. Rittenhouse’s were just a little more… obvious.

And she wasn’t just thinking about herself anymore. She had her baby to protect.

(Of all the times to forget a condom. Jesus Christ.)

At first, Emma had been suspicious. She held back when Jess kissed her. She looked at Jess like a science experiment, not a lover.

But Jess was smarter than Nicholas. She didn’t rush right in with a fake love declaration. She moved slow. She was patient.

And she did whatever Emma wanted.

 _It’s just another role_ , she told herself. _Just like any other mission_.

But nobody had told her that when you’re on a mission to spy on your husband, it’s easy because you love him.

It’s harder to fake love when you don’t actually feel it. Harder to kiss, to hold, to fuck.

She really didn’t mind that Emma had a habit of seizing her by the hair and guiding Jess down between her legs. Emma couldn’t see her face that way.

It was easy, though, really—there were no complicated emotions involved. There was no husband breaking her heart as he begged her _please, Jess, we’re your family, stay._

God, she heard those words in her nightmares, only Wyatt’s mouth was filled with blood and there was smoke in the air.

Sleeping with Amy?

In some ways that was the easiest of all.

Amy was so _sweet_. She pretended not to be. She acted prickly. Acted sarcastic. Like the devil may care. But oh, she did whatever Jess asked, whatever Jess wanted. Please, Jess. Yes, Jess. The rush she got from pinning Amy down, from ordering her around, was like a fucking drug.

When was the last time she’d had power like this?

Amy was alone. So alone. How Lucy couldn’t see the way her sister was drowning, Jess didn’t know. Or rather she did know—because Lucy was busy running through time, running against time, against Flynn, against Rittenhouse, against her own morality, trying to race faster than her grief and her rapidly reshaping convictions.

So Amy clung to her. She was so happy to see Jess. So damn happy. It made Jess want to cry. When was the last time someone had been so happy to see her? When was the last time someone had loved her without jealousy, or ordering, or power plays?

Jess had been taught to be grateful for Rittenhouse. To be glad. They gave her purpose. They gave her brother life.

But she couldn’t remember anyone, even Wyatt, ever loving her so sweetly. Ever giving her, expecting her to take and own, power in a relationship. With Wyatt, he was the man, that meant (in his head) he had the power. In Rittenhouse, power was fought for, played for.

With Amy, power was gifted freely.

And bless her heart, but she was so innocent.

“You have the weirdest cravings,” Amy would tell her when Jess just _had_ to have goddamn chocolate dipped pickles (what the fuck, baby?). Then she’d laugh and volunteer to buy Jess more.

“You know how to shoot a gun! That’s so cool! Can you teach me?” she asked, practically jumping on the bed.

“I’ll punch him for you,” she told Jess, when Wyatt came up. “Right in his smug face. I’ll break his nose, Jess, I promise.”

With Amy, things were simple. With Amy, it was the little things. With Amy…

It was so hard.

Because Amy _trusted_ her. Amy looked at Jess like she’d hung the moon. Amy believed her.

And Jess… Jess was going to destroy that.

“You want me to what?” She’d asked Emma. They’d been in bed because of course they had been. Emma seemed to like giving Jess orders after they’d had sex. Like Jess was somehow going to be stupider or more complying that way.

“Nobody can do it better than you,” Emma had said, and the look in her eyes was so sharp and knowing that Jess had almost forgotten how to breathe. “You’re good at that sort of thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“With Wyatt, of course,” Emma had laughed.

With Wyatt. Of course. Jess’s relief had felt like a dose of heroin.

“Besides,” Emma had gone on, “we need to get you out of the way. You were a good distraction for him but now your presence will just complicate things too much.” She had smiled at her then, one of those happy snake kind of smiles. “And anyway, I want you to be safe. This is an easy mission. And in your condition…”

Emma’s hand had slid onto Jess’s stomach and she’d had to work hard to keep her expression from changing, to keep her eyes wide and guileless.

“…it’s better if you’re not around any flying bullets,” Emma had finished.

So now Jess was here. Sleeping with Amy, feeding her poison, spoonful by spoonful.

But honestly, what was she doing that was so wrong? Amy’s life was miserable. Jess was here to give her purpose. Meaning. The way that Rittenhouse had given to her, so long ago.

Rittenhouse was family.

And soon, Amy would be a part of that family too.


	7. Chapter 7

It became a routine. A beautiful, special piece of routine, so different from the rest of her life.

Every Wednesday, she’d go to the bar. She’d chat with Jess, laugh, hang out until closing. Then Jess would take her back to her apartment. They’d fuck, usually, and then they’d watch television or order late night Chinese food or just lie there and talk.

Amy stayed as long as she dared, but she’d sneak back home in the early hours of the morning.

It was like having her own pocket universe. An escape.

Lately, they’d been just lying in bed and talking after sex. Amy thought that might be her favorite part.

Not that the sex wasn’t great, because it was. Jess was fucking fantastic. Just last week she’d surprised Amy with some lovely furry handcuffs. They’d gotten a hell of a lot of use out of those.

“You’re going to wake my neighbors, babe,” Jess had chuckled, even while she kept fucking her.

“Then you shouldn’t be so good at it,” Amy had shot back.

But the lying and talking together… that was special. Jess would talk to Amy softly, tell her about her brother, about growing up, about patrons at the bar.

Amy wished that she had more to talk about. That her life consisted of something other than taking care of her sick mom.

Jess seemed to sense her mood that night. They were lying tangled up together, propped up on pillows. Amy’s head was resting on Jess’s shoulder and her arm was draped over Jess’s waist. Jess was slowly tracing her fingers up and down Amy’s arm.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked softly. “Your mom?”

Amy shook her head.

“Lucy?”

Amy sighed. She didn’t understand Lucy. One moment Lucy was hugging her and listening to her and prepping dinner with her. The next she was distant, her eyes and mind far away, running off at odd hours or sitting, staring into nothing, a history book in her lap.

“I was just wishing I had more purpose in life,” she admitted.

“What do you mean?”

Amy shrugged. “Like… Lucy, she’s always known what she wanted to be, yeah? She loves history. It’s what she’s passionate about. But I don’t know. I never knew. I want to be a part of something. I want to feel like… I’m not just on this earth to drift through it, am I?”

“I don’t think you are.”

“You’re the exception.” Lucy had a purpose. She’d always had a purpose. Why didn’t Amy? “Why do I always get left behind?” she asked softly.

Jess kissed the top of her head. “I used to ask that myself. When Wyatt was off on tour.”

“How’d you get over it?”

“Well, I hated being just a mere bartender, y’know? Dead end job, dead end life. Kind of like how you’re feeling. My husband was… God, he was awful. We tried counseling but he just didn’t want to change. Refused to see how he was messing up. I felt trapped.”

“So what did you do?”

“I got help.”

Amy couldn’t see Jess’s face but she could hear the smile in her voice.

“You know how… you know how they say in _Men in Black_ , a person is smart, but people are dumb, panicky animals? And in the second Jurassic Park book they say the same thing… it’s a quote about how ten people can get more done than a hundred. Small groups with a purpose, that’s how you really make change.”

Amy wasn’t sure where this was going, but she trusted Jess would lead it back around, make it make sense.

“I was approached by a group—well, raised in them actually—and that’s their goal. To make real, effective change. Not by changing the minds of the masses. By getting right in there and making those changes because if we wait for everyone to get on board, it’ll never happen.”

“How were you raised in them?”

Jess’s voice was soft, almost rapturous. “They’re such good people, Amy. They saved my brother’s life when he was sick as a kid. They went out of their way, to save this sick little boy. That was how I knew they were serious.

“I stayed in contact with them over the years and when I was feeling helpless and frustrated and wanted to get away from Wyatt, I reached out. And they were right there for me. They welcomed me in just like family.

“And I’ve been doing big things.”

“What sort of big things?”

“Oh, like… talking to a senator, convincing them to sign off on a bill or to oppose it. That sort of thing. Imagine if, instead of just signing a petition, Amy, you were actually making change. We all know the people in power don’t listen to our marches and our online petitions. This is really _doing_ something.

“I’m helping to change my country for the better. My world for the better. And it’s amazing.”

Amy could hear the wonder, the joy, the conviction in Jess’s voice.

Jess fell silent, just running her hand up and down Amy’s arm.

“Then why do you work in the bar?” Amy asked.

“Volunteering doesn’t exactly pay the bills.”

“True.”

Jess seemed… happy. Sure her tiny apartment wasn’t much, but she was happy. Happier than Amy, certainly.

“Your group… um, sorry, what’s it called?”

“Rittenhouse.”

“Would they want another recruit?”

Jess sighed, like she was thinking about it. “Normally I’d say no. We keep it small so that it doesn’t become useless and unwieldy like most organizations. That’s the opposite of what we want. But after…”

Jess trailed off, her body going a little stiff like she’d just said something she shouldn’t.

“After what?”

“Nothing. I’ll talk to—”

Amy poked her. “Jess. I know when you’re hiding something from me. What is it?”

Jess sighed again. “You’re not going to like me very much.”

“I’m pretty sure you could kill a man and I’d still like you,” Amy teased.

“It’s just… look, um. I’m sure you’ve noticed that I don’t… I’m not exactly fond of your sister.”

“Yeah?” What did Lucy have to do with it?

“It’s not just because of how she treats you. It’s because… well…” Jess’s voice got a little shaky. Like she was upset. “Lucy was a part of our group. A part of Rittenhouse. But she rejected it.”

“What?”

Amy sat up before she even realized that she planned to move. Jess looked miserable. “You’re—my sister was—you know her?”

“I thought I did.” Jess sounded awful, and her eyes were a little too bright in that way they got when she was trying not to cry. “We were going to do so much good, Amy. She’s a history professor, so she was supposed to consult with us. Give us advice on how best to proceed with things. We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of history, y’know?

“But she was so… she said she wasn’t interested. That she wanted to focus on her career, on getting tenure, that she was just an academic…”

“You—she rejected—you gave her a chance to help change the world and she said no?”

Amy couldn’t believe it. How could her sister have been so selfish? Focusing on getting tenure? On her career? Over being a part of something important, something that would help people?

Rage, thick and black like a hand of slick oil, closed around her chest, squeezing tight.

Lucy, who’d had everything handed to her. Lucy who was the best. Lucy who was so brilliant. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. She’d been offered a chance to be a part of something important and in her own—her own selfishness, she’d turned it down.

“So like I said, we have an opening,” Jess finished.

“I’m no history professor.”

“You live with two of them. You’ve got plenty of books around the house.”

That was true.

She wanted to be a part of something important. She wanted to make a change in the world. To be special. Like Lucy.

Lucy who’d given it up for her stupid _tenure_.

“If you guys want me… if you really think I’d be good enough…”

“Oh, babe.” Jess sat up straighter, taking Amy’s face into her hands. “You are more than good enough. I promise. You’re perfect.”

Amy felt something warm and wet slide down her cheeks and she realized that she was crying. She hadn’t realized that she’d started.

Jess kissed the tears away, kissed her all over. “My poor sweet darling. You’ll get the family you deserve. You’ll see. Rittenhouse is my family, and it’ll be yours soon too. I promise. You’ll have a purpose. You’ll get to be all you deserve to be.”

“But what if they say no?”

“They won’t,” Jess said firmly, gathering Amy to her so that Amy could rest her head on Jess’s chest. “They’ll see what I see in you. They’ll see how special you are, because you’re special to me.”

Amy clung to her. She was special to someone. She was important to someone.

And soon, she’d finally have a purpose. She’d stop drifting.

Most importantly, she’d be with Jess.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special tribute to captainofthefallen for this one. You give me angst, I give you angst.

Jess had told Emma that Amy was ready, so she expected Emma to stop by the bar or something.

She definitely didn’t expect Emma to show up while Jess was fucking her.

She was two fingers deep, and had Amy begging so prettily. Her hands were in the cuffs again and she was begging Jess to please, please, _please_ let her come.

It was fucking music to her ears.

And then there was someone else. Jess knew how to fight, had been trained since she was a child, and she knew immediately that somebody else was there.

She whirled around just in time for Emma to say, “Well. And here I thought you liked it the other way around.”

Jess swallowed hard. She’d always been submissive to Emma. Played that up because she knew that was what Emma wanted. Emma liked nothing less than full control at all times.

The thought of it made her want to retch in a way she hadn’t in months. She had this under control, her feelings locked away tight.

“Emma,” she said, keeping her tone light and breezy. “You know this isn’t why I gave you a key.”

“Well, when you said to stop by, you neglected to tell me your girlfriend would be over.”

Jess grit her teeth. She’d told Emma to stop by the bar, and Emma knew it. This was another of Emma’s power plays—but not directed at Jess alone. It was designed to catch Amy off guard too, to make her feel vulnerable.

She watched Emma’s eyes flick over Amy’s form and Jess had to fight down the urge to punch her.

She could handle Emma’s mind games. She’d been raised in Rittenhouse. She was tough. But Amy wasn’t. Amy needed to be protected and handled with care.

Jess quickly reached over, undoing the handcuffs and throwing Amy’s shirt over her head, wrapping her arm around her shoulders. “Amy, this is Emma, my boss. Emma, this is Amy. She’s Lucy’s sister, the one I was telling you about.”

Emma’s gaze was cold, appraising. Sizing Amy up.

Jess wanted to roll her eyes. This whole plan had been Emma’s idea in the first place. Emma with her vendetta against Lucy and the ‘pureblood’ problem that plagued Rittenhouse. Jess hadn’t ever liked the whole idea that if you weren’t one of the families, born into it, that you automatically weren’t put into a leadership position. But she hadn’t let herself mind it too much. She’d always preferred going out into the field anyway instead of sitting back and debating for hours over decisions.

Emma, though. Emma had always wanted to be more. Wanted to lead. This plan was supposed to solidify Emma’s rule, strip away the final pureblood heir—and yes, Jess was aware she was using Harry Potter references—and get back personally at Lucy as well.

So why did Emma have to look at Amy like she wasn’t sure of her? Amy was loyal. Jess had made sure of that. It wouldn’t kill Emma to be a little more welcoming.

Besides, Amy was only half Rittenhouse. Carol had made it clear that she didn’t care about Amy’s existence, or lack of it. So really, Emma could just cut that staring contest crap.

“Jess tells me you’d like to help out, join our organization,” Emma said.

Amy nodded, glancing at Jess.

“How about you sit down?” Jess suggested. “And let us finish getting dressed before you give her a heart attack?”

It was bolder than she’d normally dare to be around Emma, but Emma didn’t dare punish her. Not in front of Amy, who was still in the beginning stages of being indoctrinated.

Emma rolled her eyes but sat down, making a _go on then_ gesture.

Jess got dressed and helped Amy.

Once they were settled, Emma gave a small smile. It was a cold one. “So. Amy. This is just going to be a little interview. We’ve had some… betrayals, in the past, from people we had trusted. You can understand why I’d want to vet you. Especially after. Well.”

Emma was a good actress when she wanted to be, Jess had to give her credit for that. She looked genuinely remorseful when she said, “I don’t want to speak ill of your sister.”

“No, be honest,” Amy replied. “I—it feels like I don’t even know her anymore.”

Jess saw the gleam in Emma's eye, the pleased one. She hated the relief she felt in her stomach, the one that told her Emma was proud of her work, so she was safe for now.

“Your sister was of great help to us in the beginning. I enjoyed working with her. But unfortunately there are people who just… don’t want to put in the work that’s necessary to really make change happen.

“It’s hard, and scary, to step out of your comfort zone. To put in the time and dedication that’s really needed. Lucy wasn’t cut out for that.”

“I am,” Amy said quickly, earnestly.

Jess’s heart squeezed.

Emma raised an eyebrow. “What makes you want to join our organization?”

“I want to make a difference,” Amy said promptly.

Jess had been helping her. Told her _this is how you answer, this is what you say._ Told her that Emma was picky and that it just helped to know how to talk to her, when Amy had asked why Jess was practicing with her.

“I’m tired of being left behind, feeling like I don’t matter. I want to matter.”

“Rittenhouse can help you do that,” Emma promised.

Emma kept asking her questions and Amy answered beautifully. She was calm, determined, but not desperate. She sounded thoughtful, firm in her decision.

“I want to feel like I have a family again,” Amy admitted.

Jess’s breath stuttered. They hadn’t practiced this.

“Jess is family to me,” Amy said. “And you’re her family. And I’m with her. So.”

She couldn’t breathe. She honestly couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t been this—felt like this—not since—when they’d told her, when Carol had told her to kill Wyatt and—

Emma smiled. She actually looked like she cared. “Well, that’s wonderful. I know we’ll be just like sisters in time. Jess and I are very close and I’m so glad she’s found someone to be happy with.”

Jess’s stomach churned. She didn’t know what Emma was saying. If she was mocking Jess for pretending to be in love with Amy, or if she thought Jess was actually developing feelings for Amy, or if it was just a dig at Jess’s relationship with Emma, what she’d done, or even—or even if Emma was going to try and make a move on Amy next.

That last one was only a remote possibility. Jess had come on to Emma, not the other way around. It hadn’t been easy, either. Emma was focused on one thing only: domination. Success, at any cost.

In fact, if Jess had really cared, she would have told Emma that this vendetta against Lucy was taking valuable time and assets away and was going to destroy her.

But, Jess realized…

She didn’t care.

She didn’t care if Rittenhouse succeeded.

“I think that’s all.” Emma smiled, standing up. “I’ll be back with an assignment soon. Goodnight, ladies.”

She gave Jess a look—one that Jess knew well. _We’ll talk later._

Jess didn’t know if that meant Emma wanted to talk strategy or if she was sending her on a new assignment. She just gave a slight nod.

Then Emma was gone.

Amy let out a comical sigh of relief. “Glad that’s over.”

“You did great,” Jess assured her. She climbed into the bed, pulling Amy to her, hugging her tightly. “You were amazing.”

“Is she always like that?” Amy asked.

“She’s prickly,” Jess replied. “She’s seen a lot of shit. Her friend Anthony was shot right in front of her.”

“What?”

Jess shrugged. “People don’t like what we’re doing. They think we’re wrong. That we’re… y’know, evil or something. People just don’t trust that we’re working in their best interests. And I mean I get it. After governments and corporations have been lying to you for so long, why trust us, y’know? They think that we should be doing things the mainstream way. But the mainstream way doesn’t work. This is actually effective.”

“Is that why you own a gun?” Amy asked quietly.

Jess had to work hard to keep herself from going stiff in surprise. “Yes. I have to know to protect myself.”

“Will I have to learn?”

“I’d like you to learn,” Jess told her honestly. “So that you can take care of yourself. Changing the world isn’t all fun and games. It can get nasty. We’ve had Homeland Security after us for a while. Big politicians, using them to try and shut us up.”

“It sounds like a movie.”

“Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.” Jess almost wanted to laugh. Amy didn’t even know about the damn time travel yet.

Amy cuddled up to her. “I’m excited. I want to do this. I want to have something to look forward to in my life again. Something that’s outside of the house.”

“You will, baby. This’ll be all the adventure you could ask for.” And then some.

Amy fell asleep quickly, nervous but excited, her adrenaline fading rapidly. She kept asking Jess questions in a valiant effort to stay awake, wanting to know how it all worked, did she get a code name, when would she get her assignment, was she going to be taking on the likes of Jeff Bezos, could they drain his bank account actually…

Jess watched her as her eyes slipped close and she became heavy in her arms.

Amy looked so young. Jess already knew there was a ten year difference between them. But it didn’t usually feel like that difference was there, or that it mattered. Amy was full of life, full of opportunity, but that just seemed to be who Amy was, who she always would be, no matter what her age.

Right now, though. She looked impossibly young. Vulnerable.

Too young for what was going to be asked of her.

Jess gently pushed some of the hair out of Amy’s face. Amy trusted her. Amy considered her to be like family.

She pulled away, the corner of her mouth tugging upwards bittersweetly as Amy reached for her in sleep, making an unhappy noise. She got up, walking across the apartment to the bathroom. Closed the door.

Splashed cold water on her face.

Breathed. Looked at herself in the mirror.

Looked at who she was.

Then she walked out of the bathroom and looked at Amy. Looked at who she was.

Jess closed her eyes, pulled out her phone, and dialed the number.

Wyatt had pressed a piece of paper into her hand on a mission a month ago. “Please, Jess,” he’d whispered. “Please, if you change your mind. Just call. We’ll help you.”

She hadn’t seen reason to call. Emma could be tracking her phone. She could find out. It wasn’t about dismantling Rittenhouse. It was about survival.

But the Rittenhouse she’d grown up with was now unrecognizable under Emma. And there was only so long that she could lie. Only so long that she could hide away the way her stomach churned.

And maybe, just maybe, the Rittenhouse she’d grown up with was the same Rittenhouse today.

She didn’t know what to think about that.

If it was her own self—but it wasn’t. Now she had Amy.

Amy, who was alone. Who had no one. Amy who trusted Jess and clung to her and was, quite possibly, in love with her.

She had to protect her. Take care of her. Nobody else would. Not even Lucy, Lucy who couldn’t see how easy it was to seduce her baby sister. She’d put Amy in a box, on a pedestal, just as Wyatt had with Jess and it was far too easy to get to Amy because of that.

Jess was all Amy had.

She had to help her.

The phone rang, and rang, and just when she was thinking that this was stupid and she shouldn’t have called—

“Hello?”

That wasn’t Wyatt.

That was Flynn.

“Flynn?”

“Jessica?”

There was the sound of muffled movement, and then Flynn saying something softly, and then Wyatt was on the line. “Jess?”

“Were you asleep with Flynn?”

“What? No! I mean yes! I mean—we were all watching a movie. We fell asleep.”

“Who’s we?”

“Lucy and Flynn and me.”

Jess couldn’t help but remember freshman year of high school. _It was just—we were watching a movie, Bobby and me, and I don’t—you can’t tell anyone. Nothing happened. My dad finds out I’m dead, Jess. I’m dead._

She still hadn’t ever told. Not anyone.

“I shouldn’t have called.”

“No! Wait, Jess. Please. Come home. We’ll—Denise’ll understand, we’ll make her understand.”

“You know as well as I do that I can’t just waltz in there. And I’m not so sure your other teammates will forgive me.” Especially Jiya. Sweet, sassy Jiya. Her friend.

She closed her eyes. This wasn’t about her. Took a deep breath. Opened her eyes again. “I’m more valuable if I stay here. You know that. Is this phone line secure?”

“It’s a satellite. Mason smuggled it in for me. He convinced Denise to let him go to this small conference to see if he could get other scientists on our side before Rittenhouse could reach them.”

Jess wanted to point out to him the stupidity of giving her that information, but Wyatt had always sucked at keeping secrets. “Then I can call you on this to report?”

“Yeah. Any time. Seriously.”

Jess looked over at Amy, sleeping peacefully. Unaware.

“I’ll do it,” she whispered. Her voice felt like it wasn’t her own. “I’ll tell you whatever I can. Whatever you need to know.”

She heard Wyatt heave a sigh of relief.

“But Wyatt?”

“Yeah?”

“You have to trust what I tell you. I don’t have time for second-guessing and going back and forth, okay? No matter how crazy it sounds, if I tell you something, you fucking listen to it, you got that?”

“Okay.”

There was a pause. Then…

“How’s the baby?”

Jess pressed her hand to her stomach. _Like Amy,_ she wanted to say. _Running out of time._

“Fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Jess—”

“I’ll call you.”

She hung up.

She lay down, curled herself around Amy. And she plotted. She planned. She was Rittenhouse raised, and she was good at planning. Good at lying. At getting people to see only what she wanted them to see of her.

She would keep Amy safe.


	9. Chapter 9

The next few weeks felt like a completely different life to the one that she had known.

In the mornings, Jess would take Amy out to the shooting range, or she’d let her into a local boxing club that a friend of hers owned and they’d spar.

“I don’t know why I need to learn so much self-defense,” Amy told her.

“I want you to be safe,” Jess replied. “It’s important that you be prepared. Better to know how to do something and not need to use it then the other way around, right?”

It was good exercise and it gave her new, tangible goals to focus on. It helped her get out of the house. And it got her more time with Jess. So it wasn’t like she was going to complain.

They talked a lot while they were doing it, too. Amy couldn’t help but have questions. “How was Rittenhouse founded?” “When will I meet the other members?” “What sort of projects are you working on?”

Jess answered her to the best of her ability. “We’re all kind of kept in the dark as to what the other people are doing,” she explained. “It’s so that none of us can rat anyone else out.”

Sparring and shooting helped to get out her frustrations, too, and she had plenty of them. Lucy kept wanting to know where Amy was going, why she wasn’t with mom.

“That’s what the nurse is for, Jesus Christ,” Amy said, grabbing her stuff to go meet Jess.

“I still have a right to know where you’re going.”

“Not when you won’t tell me where you’re going, you don’t!” Amy shot back.

The look of hurt on Lucy’s face stayed with her for hours afterwards. Amy told herself that Lucy deserved it. She’d been given everything, and she’d thrown it away. Amy wasn’t going to do that. Amy was going to be better.

And things were… not good. Not with Lucy being how she was. But things were better than they had been. She had Jess. She was going to get her first job with Rittenhouse soon. She had fresh air and was exercising. It was all okay.

Then Jess vanished for a week.

There was no word from her. Nothing. The last time Amy saw her, Jess kissed her goodbye softly and told her to be good.

“I’m always good,” Amy replied.

“Unless you want to be naughty, trust me, I know,” Jess replied. “But just—be good, okay?”

“Okay.”

Then she’d vanished for a week.

Amy tried calling her. Texting her. She showed up at the bar. No answer.

Was this a Rittenhouse mission? Was Jess not able to tell her, for Amy’s safety as well as her own?

She was in bed late at night when she got the call. Jess’s name lit up the screen as Amy blearily pawed for her phone.

She was awake at once, sitting up, her heart hammering in her throat. “Jess?” she whispered.

“Amy.” Jess sounded like—oh God, she sounded awful. Amy had never heard her sound like that. “I’m—I’m at the apartment, Amy—”

“I’m on my way.”

Jess’s apartment was just close enough to walk. Amy sprinted the whole way there, her lungs burning, not caring that it was two in the morning. Let some asshole try and jump her, she’d break his damn back. Nothing was stopping her from getting to Jess.

She was curled up on the floor in the bathroom.

“Jess? Holy shit.” Amy grabbed her, got her to her feet. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Jess grabbed at her, held her close. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just the drugs they gave me, I had my appendix out…”

Amy glanced down and saw that Jess was wearing just a t shirt and not one, not two, but three pads lining her underwear. “Jesus, do you bleed after one of those things?”

Jess didn’t say anything, just wrapped herself around Amy tighter and buried her face into Amy’s neck. “Okay,” Amy said. “No worries. I’ve got you.”

She half-carried Jess to the bed and collapsed onto it with her. Jess was honest-to-God crying now, something Amy had never seen before.

“Those were some powerful drugs,” Amy noted.

Jess pulled back, her fingers coming up to delicately trace the lines of Amy’s face. “Amy,” she whispered. “Amy I’ve missed you so much.”

“I missed you too.”

Jess buried her face into Amy’s chest and cried. She cried so hard the bed shook.

Amy didn’t know what to say, what to do. So she just held her. And held her. And held her.

 

* * *

 

Something changed after that.

“You should come to the bar earlier,” Jess said one day. “There are some fun people there, you could make some more friends.”

It wasn’t a bad suggestion, but it was the first time Jess had ever said anything like that. Amy looked at her. “Why?”

“Because you need more friends.”

“But I have you.”

“I’m your girlfriend. You need more than just me.”

It was the first time that Jess had called Amy her girlfriend, and she’d preened.

Then a few days later, Amy found college pamphlets on the table in Jess’s apartment. “What are these?”

“Oh, for you!” Jess smiled. “I thought you might want to take a look.”

“Why?”

“To go back to college. Find what you’re passionate about.”

It was like whiplash. Jess had been all that she had, all that she’d known. Now Jess was telling her to go out, to find things, to pick up hobbies, to make friends.

Amy sat on the bed, cross-legged, while Jess put away groceries. “I was thinking that we could make a weekend of it,” Jess was saying. “The campus isn’t too far away. The nurse can look after your mom…”

“Is it because you don’t want me anymore?” Amy blurted out.

Jess paused and looked at her. “What?”

“You’re asking me to go to college again. To make friends. Is it because you don’t want me to be lonely when you break up with me?”

“What, babe, no.” Jess walked over to her, and sat on the edge of the bed. Took her hands. “Listen. It’s not healthy that you’ve only got me in your life, okay? I want you to be happy. And that means that you get happiness not just from me but from your job, from your friends, from your family.”

“But I have a job. Rittenhouse.”

Jess’s eyes were big and sad. She looked so sad all the time lately. Amy wished Jess would tell her why. “Okay, sweetheart.”

She kissed her on the forehead.

Amy wished she understood why it felt like _I’m sorry._


	10. Chapter 10

It was two in the morning.

Amy always remembered that because something, for some reason, woke her up. Maybe it was her instincts after so many months of taking care of Mom. Maybe it was some nightmare, long forgotten, that vanished into smoke the moment she woke up.

Maybe it was just a sixth sense. Something in her knowing that the universe had now irrevocably shifted.

But whatever it was, at two in the morning she opened her eyes and knew something was wrong.

She rolled over, looking at the clock, then sitting up in bed. “Lucy?”

All was silent.

She got up, putting on her slippers, padding softly through the house.

Lucy was downstairs again, curled up in the armchair, a book on Clara Bow in her lap, the reading lamp still on. There were dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted.

It would probably be more disruptive to her to wake her up and take her to bed than it would be to just leave her there.

Amy went back upstairs and peered into Mom’s room.

And saw the machine flatlining.

“Mom!” she burst out, flicking on the light and rushing in. “Mom!”

“Amy?” It was Lucy downstairs. “Amy—”

“It’s Mom, it’s Mom!” Amy grabbed Mom, shook her, started CPR.

There was nothing to be done.

She and Lucy held each other afterwards, crying. Lucy was sitting on the bed but Amy had slid to the floor so for once Lucy was the taller one, holding Amy to her chest, the both of them clinging and rocking slightly. Mom hadn’t been perfect. But she was Mom.

That was the last good moment she had with Lucy.

After that it was funeral preparations. Relatives they hadn’t even known about showing up. There were weird people at the funeral, including this one older guy who seemed to give Lucy the creeps. His name started with a C or something. Lots of historians came, paying their respects. Carol Preston had been well respected in her field.

Lucy was twitchy the whole time. Looking over her shoulder. Even at the wake at their house, while Amy was running around serving people, Lucy looked like she expected someone to put a gun to her head.

Jess was on another job for Rittenhouse and couldn’t make it, but she’d sat on the phone with Amy while Amy cried in the bathroom.

“I’m so sorry,” Jess told her, and she sounded honestly wrecked. “I want to be there, I would if I could, I hate that I’m not there. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Amy wasn’t sure that she wanted her girlfriend and her sister to meet for the first time at her mom’s funeral. “I’m okay.”

“You’re not okay and I should be there, but you’re being really strong. You’re a really strong person, okay Amy? You’re stronger than you think.”

“Okay.”

“Remember to eat, and to get sleep, okay baby?”

“Okay.”

Now, Lucy was behaving like a jackrabbit and Amy needed a damn ally out there. “You’re the historian,” she hissed, catching Lucy in the kitchen. “You know these people!”

“I don’t know them,” Lucy replied. “Or at least, I know some of them and I don’t know why they’re _here_ , at Mom’s _funeral_. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Lucy what are you talking about.”

Lucy just shoved past her and went back out into the living room.

Amy kept putting on a smile for the guests. Yes, it was so very sad. No, it wasn’t unexpected, but you can’t really prepare yourself for something like that, can you? Yes, she was such a strong woman. So intelligent. A real fighter.

She wanted to collapse when the last person left.

Lucy stood on the front step with her and waved as the last person drove off. What the hell were they going to do with the leftover food…

Then another car pulled up.

Another guest?

Someone got out—a man, handsome looking in a pretty, puppyish kind of way. He had sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. He wasn’t dressed for a funeral. He was wearing jeans and a shirt with a jacket.

Jess had trained her how to look for weapons on people. This man was carrying a gun, inside the jacket.

Amy’s blood ran cold.

“Hey, Ames?” Lucy grabbed her arm. “We need to talk real quick.”

“Lucy—Lucy th-there’s a man…”

“I know. That’s my friend. He’s coming to pick me up.”

“Pick you up? Where are you going?”

Lucy closed her eyes, and Amy saw a tear slide down her cheek. What the hell was going on?

Lucy opened her eyes. “Listen to me, okay? I need to go away. And you can’t know where I’m going. It’s for your own safety. Anybody comes to talk to you about me, you don’t know anything.”

Anger burned in her. It felt like it was so easy to get angry these days. “Yeah, because I don’t know.”

“It’s for your protection.”

“My protection? So all those days of you vanishing, going somewhere you won’t tell me, no explanation—that was, what, to keep me safe?”

“Yes!” Lucy’s dark eyes were wide and pleading. “You think I didn’t want to tell you everything? That I like keeping secrets from my own sister?”

“Who is this guy? Is this your boyfriend?” Had Jess been right? “Have you been seeing someone and not telling me?”

“What? No!”

“Lucy?” the guy called. He sounded worried.

“Just a sec!” Lucy called back. She grabbed Amy, leaning in. “Listen to me. I know you don’t understand but you have to know that I don’t want to do this.”

The man at the car swore as his phone started ringing. “Yeah, I’m here.” He looked up at Lucy. “Luce, we gotta go, we gotta go _now_.”

“No.” Amy grabbed her sister right back. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what the hell has been going on with you.”

“Amy—”

“Don’t ‘Amy’ me!” Amy could feel herself starting to cry and she hated that. “You haven’t given a damn, you don’t care about me, you just care about yourself! Your tenure, your work, you, you, you, it’s all about you! That’s always how it’s been! Who took care of Mom while you were running around doing—I don’t even know what, doing him?”

The guy at the car made a choking noise.

“I did. I took care of her. Even though she didn’t want me, she always wanted you, just you, perfect princess Lucy!”

A look of pain crossed Lucy’s face. “Please don’t—don’t call me that—”

“Did you know I have a girlfriend? Huh? I do. I have a girlfriend and she’s wonderful and gorgeous and badass, and I managed to see her _without_ completely abandoning Mom the way that you did—”

“Amy.” Lucy was crying outright now. “Amy, I’m sorry I didn’t—you don’t understand—”

“Then enlighten me! What don’t I understand? What big, bold miracle are you going to share with me that’ll make up for how selfish you’ve been?”

“Lucy.” The man was walking up to them now. “We have to go, they’ll be here any minute. Rufus just called, they attacked the facility. He put Denise and Jiya in the Lifeboat and they got out, Mason was at home, Denise is calling him, apparently they already showed up at Rufus’s house we have to go _now_.”

“You can’t leave,” Amy insisted. She felt petulant and righteous and angry and sad and confused and hurt all at the same time, emotions warring and riled up within her until they were all going to spill over and leave her nothing but a husk. “Lucy, you can’t.”

“It’s to keep you safe.” Lucy grabbed her and hugged her. “Amy, please, I love you, just know that, okay? I love you.”

“You’re going to stay and you’re going to explain to me!”

The man yanked Lucy away, leading her to the car. “Lucy, we have to go.”

“I’m sorry!” Lucy yelled, but she was letting herself be led away, she was letting herself leave, she was abandoning her.

“I hate you!” Amy screamed. “I hate you so much, you won’t tell me anything, fine, go, I don’t fucking care, just—just go and don’t come back, I hate you, you’re so selfish and you took everything and I hate you, I never want to see you again, I hate you!”

Lucy was still crying but she wasn’t fighting the man, wasn’t trying to go back to Amy. He was talking to her in a soothing voice, too low for Amy to hear, and then he was bundling Lucy into the front passenger seat and getting into the car and they were driving away.

Amy’s knees gave out and she sank to the ground.

That was where she was when the car pulled up twenty minutes later.

Two men got out. They were wearing guns too.

“Ma’am?”

Amy wiped at her eyes. “Yes?”

“Are you Miss Amy Preston?”

“Y-yes.”

“Is your sister home?”

“N-no. She left, she…” Amy trailed off.

She hated Lucy so much. She hated her. Keeping secrets, thinking only of herself, now running off with no explanation. Who knew that these men would believe Amy when she told them she didn’t know anything? Had Lucy just left her to the wolves?

“Did she say where she was going?”

Amy shook her head.

One of the men sighed, looking at his partner before crouching down in front of Amy. “You don’t know me, but I’ve heard about you from Miss Whitmore.”

“Emma?” Amy sat up straighter. "Emma Whitmore?"

The man nodded. “I’m Rittenhouse as well. We’re looking for your sister. She and her associates just bombed our facility.”

The man had said something about that. About how some other people had used a… something called a Lifeboat to get out and survive the explosion.

Her own sister? Attacking innocent people?

“I’m so sorry Miss Preston. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But your sister’s on a wanted list now. The police will be after her too, we’re just trying to get to her first. See if Emma can’t get her the help she clearly needs.”

That made sense. Emma had said that she and Lucy used to be close, right?

“Do you have any idea where she was going?”

Amy shook her head. “She wouldn’t tell me. We—we had a fight about it. I just know there was a man with her.” She described him.

The Rittenhouse agent nodded. “That’s very helpful. I’m so sorry for your loss, Miss Preston, and that all of this is happening today. I hope you have a good night. I’m sure Emma will be contacting you soon with news.”

“Of course.”

The man stood up again and nodded at his partner, and then they left.

Amy sat on the porch, still curled up. She felt numb inside. Drained.

It was still where she was when Jess found her.


	11. Chapter 11

Amy stayed in the house.

It was paid for, and she didn’t know where else to go.

“You need to sell it,” Jess told her. “Buy yourself your own place. A new place. You’re just filled with ghosts here.”

Maybe she was right. But ghosts were all she had left of her family.

She didn’t hear from Lucy. Not for weeks.

At first she didn’t want to hear from her. She’d have been happy if Lucy never showed up again. But ‘never’ was a long time and after the first couple of weeks, Amy started to feel like shit.

Had she really screamed all those things at Lucy? Had she really been such a brat?

“You weren’t a brat,” Jess would tell her. “You were upset and confused and it had been building up for a long time. Don’t blame yourself.”

But now Lucy was gone, and Amy couldn’t get an explanation, couldn’t apologize, couldn’t demand an apology in return.

She had nobody. Nobody except for Jess.

Jess still had her work but she would spend all the rest of her time with Amy. She would cook for her, still encouraged her to go back to school, told her to find friends. “Distract yourself from Lucy,” she’d tell her.

“How can I?” Amy would reply. “She blew up a facility, Jess. Emma’s after her. How can I think about anything else?”

One time, they were lying in bed, and Amy whispered, “You won’t leave me, right?”

Jess propped herself up on her elbow. “What makes you think I will?”

“My mom left. Lucy left.”

“Lucy felt she didn’t have a choice. She was trying to keep you safe.”

“She’s a terrorist.”

“I’m not saying what she did or didn’t do with anything else. I’m just saying that with you, for you, in your relationship, she wanted to keep you safe. That’s all she’s trying to do.”

“So why hasn’t she told me anything?”

“Maybe she thought if you knew something, it would put you in danger.”

Amy stared up at the ceiling. “Jess?”

“Yeah baby?”

Amy took a deep breath. “I love you.”

There was a moment of painful silence, and then Jess made a tiny sobbing noise and kissed her desperately. Amy clung to her, surprised by the onslaught of kisses being rained down on her.

“I’m sorry,” Jess whispered, into her mouth, along her jaw, her throat, as she kissed her way down Amy’s body. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Amy, I’m sorry…”

“You don’t have to be sorry.” Amy’s fingers threaded through Jess’s soft hair as Jess kissed at her thighs, nudging them open. “Jess, you—oh, oh, fuck, you—”

Jess didn’t say she loved her back. But it felt like, as she licked into Amy, as she kept kissing her and fucking her, making Amy scream but asking nothing for herself, that she was saying it—or at least finding another way to apologize.

Apologize for what? Amy wanted to scream it at her. The person she wanted to apologize wasn’t around to do it, and the person who had done nothing but good things for her was saying she was sorry, and it was like some strange upside down backwards funhouse world that Amy had stepped into. She didn’t know what was up or down anymore.

Jess teased her, took her time with her, kept at it until Amy was sobbing with it and begging her the way she knew Jess loved. Jess was such an easygoing person, Amy didn’t think a lot of people saw how much she longed for control, but Amy saw it. And Amy craved it, because everything in her life was so out of control, it was nothing but sheer relief to feel someone else take the reins.

She came hard, but it didn’t erase the questions in her mind. “Why?” she asked, when Jess crawled back up and kissed her again. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

Jess brushed Amy’s hair back out of her face. “Because,” Jess replied, “You’re the innocent one in all of this.”

Amy didn’t know what that meant, but the way Jess said it was so heavy and forlorn, so aching, that she couldn’t find it in herself to press further.

Jess pressed her face into the crook of Amy’s neck. “You know,” she said softly, “Wyatt never meant to hurt me. He wanted to be a good person.”

That was a change in subject. Was that why Jess was apologizing? Because she came ‘second hand’? Because she had baggage?

“But he did hurt you,” Amy replied. “He didn’t mean to but he did.”

“Exactly,” Jess replied.

Amy didn’t know what that meant. Was Jess implying…

“You haven’t hurt me,” Amy said.

Jess sighed and kissed Amy’s neck. She didn’t say anything else.

Amy wasn’t sure how long it took Jess to fall asleep, but it took Amy a long, long time.

 

* * *

 

About two months after Mom had died and Lucy had vanished, Emma showed up.

Amy had been doing what Jess had said. She’d started going to the bar on different nights. Started volunteering at the library. Had started to look into college.

There wasn’t much else she could do, and Jess had kept gently prodding her until it was just easier to do it.

Jess had moved in, or as good as. Amy was pretty sure that Jess still kept her apartment for whatever reason. But she was living full time with Amy. She had her own toothbrush, her clothes were in the closet, and they went grocery shopping together.

Every so often, Amy would get assignments for Rittenhouse. Nothing as big as Jess’s assignments. Jess would be gone for days at a time. But things like delivering letters or bills or something to the houses of senators, attending rallies and meetings and taking notes or filming. Every little thing, Emma said, would help. And Amy was glad to finally be a part of something. To be needed, wanted, to be important.

Amy kept telling herself that she was happy. That she had everything that she’d wanted. She was starting to build a life for herself. Jess was talking about training her to be a bartender, get her a steady job for when Mom’s nest egg ran out. She had a lovely girlfriend, a girlfriend who took care of her and wanted her to have friends and wanted her to succeed.

But she couldn’t get rid of the ache in her chest.

And Jess would cry a lot. Not where she thought Amy could hear her or see. But something was wrong with her. She’d also touch Amy hungrily, desperately, like she thought she wouldn’t get another chance. If Amy rolled away from her in the middle of the night Jess would wake up and reach for her, a little unhappy frown on her face, and pull Amy back into her arms.

She didn’t know how to ask Jess what was wrong. Confronting Lucy had been angry, awful, ashes in her mouth. And Jess was the only person that Amy had left.

She didn’t want to push too far. Didn’t want to lose her.

But two months was enough to establish a feeling of normalcy, of finding some kind of equilibrium, tentative as it was.

Then Emma came.

She arrived during breakfast, when Jess was frying up some eggs and quizzing Amy on drinks.

“The bartending test is a week away.”

“A week is a shorter time frame than you’d think,” Jess replied.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Amy said, as Jess went stiff at the stove.

She opened it to see Emma standing there. She looked… wow, exhausted. Worn down. Her hair was done in a simple braid, her clothes not nearly as austere as Amy was used to.

“Amy.” Emma smiled at her wanly. “Can I come in?”

“Of course.” Amy stepped aside. “Jess, can you put on some eggs for Emma? What would you like, over easy? Over hard? Scrambled?”

“I’m not hungry, but thank you,” Emma said, stepping into the kitchen.

Amy might have been imagining it, but she thought she saw Jess’s jaw tighten the way it did when Jess was upset. But then she was all relaxed and smiling, offering Emma some water, or perhaps coffee, love the sweater, how’s everything, did Dave and Ellie finally tie the knot…

“I’m afraid I’m here with some bad news,” Emma said. She sighed. “Lucy won’t be reasoned with. She’s—she’s started murdering Rittenhouse agents.”

The bottom dropped out of Amy’s stomach.

“No.” No, Lucy wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. “That—that man she was with, that I saw, he must’ve put her up to it. Lucy’s—she’s—”

“Oh, Amy.” Emma sat down, taking Amy’s hand. Her grip was firm and dry and, somehow, cold. Like touching marble. “Are you sure that Lucy isn’t capable of this? Are you really sure?”

Jess was standing by the stove, her eyes bright but her face blank, revealing nothing.

“I…” Amy looked away from Jess, to Emma with her cold, sharp eyes, her sharp face. Did she really know Lucy at all?

“She abandoned you.” Emma glanced over at Jess, as if asking Jess to back her up.

But Jess had said to think about why Lucy might have done this. She’d said that Lucy might have done this for Amy’s protection.

But could it be because Lucy hadn’t wanted Amy to see what she’d become?

Jess didn’t say anything, just folded her arms.

Emma turned back to Amy. “Lucy’s volatile. Dangerous. She won’t listen to reason. We need your help.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You have a purpose, Amy. A glorious purpose.” Emma smiled softly, her eyes pleading. “You can help us. Lucy loves you. She’ll listen to you. We need you to meet with her.”

“What will I tell her?”

Jess turned away, but right before she did, Amy thought she saw Jess’s eyes go dark and shuttered.

Emma gave a small, regretful sigh. “We don’t want you to tell her anything.”

That was when she pulled it out. Black, shining, surprisingly heavy.

Amy stared down at it.

At the gun.

“We don’t want you to talk to Lucy. We need you to kill her.”


	12. Chapter 12

They met in a park.

Amy got there first. Jess and Emma were behind some trees farther away.

She hadn’t told Jess that she was scared. But Jess had known anyway. Had taken Amy’s face into her hands and kissed her softly, her eyes warm.

“You’re going to be okay, I promise. Nobody will hurt you. I’ll be right there the whole time.”

“What if I can’t do it?”

“You can.” Jess had put her hand over Amy’s heart. “Because you are a strong woman who comes from strong women. Because you’re my Amy. And I know when the time comes, you will do what you know is right.”

So now she was sitting on a bench. In a park.

Waiting for her sister.

Getting in contact with Lucy hadn’t been easy, but Jess had figured out a way.

“How can you do it?”

Jess had winked at her. “Trade secrets, sweetheart.”

Lucy had agreed to come. Of course she had. When Amy told her that she was sick, that she needed her, Emma had said, Lucy would have no choice. Not after losing Mom.

Amy couldn’t help but wonder what it meant that Lucy would come to her if she said that she was ill. Jess’s words rang in her head. _Maybe she did it to protect you._

Emma’s orders were explicit, though. And Amy had learned so much about Rittenhouse. She had finally gotten to be a part of something, to feel as though she made a difference. That she wasn’t in someone’s shadow.

Amy felt the gun in her jacket, weighing her down. Heavy, awkward, impossible to forget about.

“Hey.”

She turned around. Lucy had come up from behind her. She looked… tired. Her hair was done up in a bun instead of being loose around her head. She wore a dark sweater that looked too big for her, a man’s sweater, and there were still circles under her eyes.

“Hey,” Amy replied, not sure what to do next.

Lucy walked around and sat down, keeping a tentative distance between them. “You… you said you were sick. Do you know what it is? The—the diagnosis?”

Her voice was so small, so soft, but also… resigned. As if it was par for the course that the universe was taking someone else from her.

Amy stared at her sister for a moment. Her big sister.

She could practically hear Emma in her ear. _Just shoot her. Why are you hesitating. She was selfish. She lied to you, she held information from you, she abandoned you._

But she also couldn’t forget the things that Jess had whispered to her in the dead of night.

Then several things happened at once.

Emma yelled, “Flynn you bas—”

At the same time, someone, a man, yelled out, “Lucy, get down!”

And another man yelled out, “No!”

Gunshots filled the air.

Amy jumped, letting out a scream of surprise. Lucy didn’t jump or scream—she tackled Amy to the ground, out of the way.

Jess, Jess, where was Jess, was she okay—

“You brought people?” she demanded. She’d asked Lucy to come alone.

“Apparently it was a good thing!” Lucy replied. “Quick, Amy, come with me, we can—”

Emma and Jess were coming out from the trees now, and on the other side of the bench two men were emerging. One, Amy recognized, the blonde from before. The other was tall, definitely over six feet, with dark hair and an expression like some kind of avenging god.

“Lucy!” The taller man shouted. He had some kind of accent, Eastern European, maybe? “Lucy, take Amy and run!”

The blonde was clutching at his side, Amy realized. There was red between his fingers.

“I should’ve known you two would show up,” Emma snarled. Her face was completely contorted, cold and cruel. “Can’t go anywhere without your two Prince Charmings, can you princess.”

Lucy was tugging at her arm. “Amy, Amy please we have to go…”

The taller man kept his gun on Emma but stepped to the side, allowing the blonde to lean on him. “I’m fine,” she heard the blonde mumble, but he certainly didn’t look fine.

“Jess,” the blonde said, louder now. “Jess, what—what happened to you?”

“What are you talking about?” Jess replied. These two knew each other?

The blonde was heavily leaning on the tall man now, and Amy could have been wrong but the taller guy looked really worried, switching his gun to his other hand, keeping it on Emma but allowing him to wrap his arm around the shorter man’s waist, propping him upright.

“Wyatt, this isn’t the time—”

“Like hell it isn’t,” Wyatt replied.

“You’re hurt—”

“I need to know, Jess!” Wyatt shouted. “Jess, where’s the baby? What did you do with the baby?”

The world dropped out from underneath Amy.

Baby?

“That’s none of your concern,” Emma said. “Flynn, if you want your boy to get out of here alive, I suggest you back down.”

“What, and have you two shoot us the moment I drop my weapon?” the taller man, Flynn, snarled.

“Amy please,” Lucy whispered. “They’re not looking at us, we have to go, you can come with me, it’ll be safe, I’ll explain everything I promise I’m so sorry Amy—”

“Go on,” Emma called out, and Amy knew, just somehow knew, that Emma was talking to her. “You know what to do. You can end all of this. You can be everything you wanted to be, the person you always wanted to be. Important. Special. Not in anybody’s shadow.”

“What are you smoking?” Flynn asked.

Wyatt sagged further against him and Flynn struggled to keep him upright. “Jess,” Wyatt shouted again. “What. Did you do. With the baby. Where is our child?”

 _Our child_.

Wyatt.

Wyatt _Logan_.

This was Jess’s ex-husband.

Amy thought she might be sick.

“Do what you were ordered to do!” Emma shouted.

“Now, sweetheart,” Jess added. Her voice was like steel, cutting through everything. “Do it now.”

Lucy was right in front of her. Nobody knew that she had a gun. Flynn’s gun was on Emma, Emma’s was on Flynn, Wyatt had his supposedly on Emma but now it was more aimed at Emma’s feet, and Jess’s gun was on Flynn as well. Lucy had no gun.

Nobody was looking at Amy. Not Flynn, or Wyatt, or Emma.

Only Jess and Lucy.

“Is she…” Lucy stared at her. “…is Emma talking to… to you?”

Amy felt the gun in her jacket.

“Amy?” Lucy’s voice was a broken whisper. “Ames?”

“Do it now,” Jess warned.

“Lucy.” Flynn’s voice was heavy, sweeping, and Amy could see the trapped look in his eyes. He couldn’t stop holding up Wyatt, he couldn’t move to get to Lucy.

“I’m sure Wyatt could attest,” Emma said sweetly. “It’s the ones closest to us that hurt us the most, isn’t it?”

Amy got her hand around the gun handle.

_Do it, sweetheart. Do it now._

She whipped the gun out. Flynn let out the kind of scream that Amy had only heard in nightmares, Wyatt gave up the ghost and fell to the ground, eyes closed, and Lucy didn’t make any sound at all, just closed her eyes.

_Do it, sweetheart._

Amy fired.


	13. Chapter 13

Jess had known Emma’s plans for Amy from the beginning.

“Do you really think this is going to work?” She’d asked. “You sure it isn’t too… melodramatic?”

Emma snorted. “We’re taking out two birds with one stone. Go back in time and have Carol hook up with that… wet blanket. She’ll marry him, leave Rittenhouse for him, get cancer and die. That’s one idiot out of the way.

“The daughter’s easily groomed. Amy? She’s young. And you’re the best at this kind of thing.”

“Lucy always told Wyatt that Amy was strong willed. Determined. Rebellious. She stood up to Carol.”

“Things change when a relative gets sick.” Emma’s smile was like the brittle edge of a knife. “She’s young. Has no direction. Her sister’s about to start keeping a lot of secrets from her. And I know that in any lifetime, Carol will favor Lucy. Precious, princess Lucy.”

“And you want Amy to—kill her own sister?”

“Lucy will trust Amy no matter what. If anyone can get close to her even after the bunker and kill her, it’ll be Amy. And this time, we’ll make sure she’s not compromised.” Emma shot Jess a look.

Jess bowed her head. She’d messed up severely, not killing Wyatt.

If only Emma and the rest of Rittenhouse knew how close she’d come to defecting.

She wasn’t in love with Wyatt. She’d been ready to walk away, screw Rittenhouse and screw Wyatt and screw everyone else. They hadn’t even told her that Wyatt was her target until he’d been called to work for Mason Industries. By then she’d given up on counseling with him and was ready to serve him the damn papers.

But she had never wanted to kill him. He was her best friend. She’d thought that maybe, in divorcing him, she could get her friend back.

And then he’d come home different and, well, she couldn’t _not_ sleep with him. That would’ve been too suspicious. She had to play the forgiving wife.

But she couldn’t kill him. She couldn’t kill any of them.

Okay, so some days she really could kill Flynn.

But she couldn’t kill the others. And she’d seen the way that Wyatt looked at Lucy, the way he’d tried and failed to not look at Flynn. How his eyes had dragged over both of them, the way he got twitchy when he saw Jess watching.

Maybe she hadn’t been the only one holding on for old time’s sake and nothing more.

She stalled for time. Delayed reporting. Said there were complications. Wondered how to defect, when was the right time. Wondered if she should just go back to Rittenhouse and say no can do, put me somewhere else.

But then the little stick had a plus sign on it.

And everything had changed.

Rittenhouse could have killed her before. What was she except for an insignificant bartender? She wasn’t high up enough on the ladder for her safety to be guaranteed. But now—now she had a life inside of her. A child. A baby.

Until that baby was born, she had to stay alive.

So she’d stolen the Lifeboat, and she’d stolen Jiya.

But her failure to kill Wyatt had not gone unnoticed, especially by Emma, who missed nothing.

Emma walked over to her, eyes dark. “You’ll turn Amy Preston. We’ll use her in a sting, and she’ll kill Lucy. And the last thing that little bitch will ever see is the person she loves most in the world betraying her. Do. You. Understand. Me?”

Jess thought about the Rittenhouse people that Emma had cracked down on, the ones who’d mysteriously vanished, the new men being brought in, the people being promoted, the people being demoted. She thought about Nicholas and Carol shot dead in a minute, shot in cold blood without second thought.

She thought about her baby.

“Yes, Emma. I understand.”

Incidentally, that had been when she’d started seducing Emma, as well.

 

* * *

 

“What’s she planning?”

Jess sighed. “In the present? Making Rittenhouse public. She thinks with the current political climate the wind has shifted in our favor. In the past? Next stage of sleeper agents. Starting them as kids, not just sending adults.”

“God damn.”

There was an awkward pause. There were a lot of those, lately.

“Wyatt?”

“Yeah?”

“If I came home…”

“This is always your home, Jess.”

“But if I did. Are you sure we should go back to… the way that we were?”

“What do you mean?”

“Wyatt. I. I know. You’re still in love with Lucy.”

“Jess I—”

“And I know you’re… you’ve been mentioning Flynn a lot lately.”

“Of course I’ve been mentioning him. He’s practically my roommate.”

“Don’t dodge it, Wyatt. You’ve been talking about him as much as you talk about Lucy: way too much.”

There was a long, painful pause.

“…I’m not… Jess I… I’m not…”

“We’re not in Texas anymore, Wyatt. You can be whoever you want.”

A bark of harsh, wet laughter. “Oh. Can I. Yet I never managed to be a good husband, did I?”

“Wyatt…”

“First chance you get you’re trying to get me with someone else. Because you don’t want me.”

“This isn’t about what I want. This is about what you want, what I think might be good for you.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I mean it, Wyatt. I haven’t… I haven’t made the best decisions. But I’m trying to be better. Do what makes you happy, okay? And fuck everything else.”

Another pause. This one was heavy.

She sighed. “There’s going to be a meeting. Amy’s going to get into contact with Lucy. I’ll pass it on to you, in Emma’s presence, over the phone. Pretend this is the first time I’m contacting you in months. Amy will ask Lucy to come alone, but don’t let her. Bring Flynn, and watch the trees.”

“Wait. You two have Amy—”

“Just do what I say for once in your goddamn life, Wyatt. And get over yourself.”

She hung up.

 

* * *

 

They were lying in bed, curled up with each other. Jess had nightmares ever since she’d given up Joy, but it was better if Amy was in her arms.

Emma was going to come soon. She was going to give Amy her assignment, soon.

Too soon.

Jess hadn’t finished undoing the damage that she’d done, she hadn’t worked fast enough, Amy was still too lost and there wasn’t enough time—

“Baby girl?”

“Yeah?”

Amy had told her that she loved her. She _loved_ her. And unlike with Wyatt, unlike with so many people in Jess’s life, there were no strings attached. No conditions. No fine print that said things like _I love you but I will be jealous and possessive_ or _I love you but only so long as I can keep you on a pedestal and see you as perfect._

Amy just… loved her. And that was all.

Jess had to protect her. Not just from something like a gunshot but from people like Emma. People who would leave Amy to walk off a cliff and then shrug and say ‘oh well’ when Amy was dashed on the rocks below.

She wouldn’t let anyone make Amy a monster. Not like they’d made her.

“Do you trust me?”

Amy shifted a little, like she was waking herself up more to respond to the question properly. “Of course.”

“But I mean… there’s different kinds of trust. Like you can trust someone to be good but not to be responsible. And you can trust someone to pay the bills but not to keep a secret.”

“I’d trust you with anything.”

“So if I told you to do something, even if you didn’t understand why—you’d do it?”

“What do you want me to do?”

Jess reached down, took Amy’s face in her hands, lifted her up so that they could stare into each other’s eyes. It was just light enough from the streetlights outside the window that she could make out Amy’s features.

“Emma’s going to give you a mission. You’re going to shoot someone on that mission. Emma will be there too. Don’t shoot the person she tells you to. Shoot Emma instead.”

“I’m going to—Jess what—what are you talking about—”

“I can’t tell you anything else. You just have to trust me, okay?”

“But Emma…”

“Emma isn’t who you think she is, Amy. Rittenhouse isn't what you think it is, none of it is. Emma's been lying to you, she's tricked you. But I know that this will make things right. Do you trust me?”

“…yes.”

“Then do what I tell you. Just this once. You did everything else I told you to do, didn’t you?” It was manipulative, but what was one more sin at this point. There was no time for anything else. “You’ve been so good. Just one more thing. You’ll be the only one who can, when the moment comes. The one person she won’t expect. Don’t shoot your target. Shoot Emma.”

Shoot Emma.


	14. Chapter 14

Amy fired.

Lucy flinched as though she’d been shot, then seemed to retroactively realize that she hadn’t been. Flynn’s hand was stretched out, as if he could somehow save Lucy, protect her, even from several feet away. Wyatt was passed out, the blood covering his hand now and spreading over his shirt.

Jess stood, her gun pointed at the ground.

And Emma reached up, and touched her chest.

Her hands came away sticky and red.

Amy watched as Emma’s eyes slid slowly from Amy to Jess. “You—you were supposed to—be her handler—I trusted—you loved me.”

“I loved you?” Jess’s voice was nearly hysterical. “I fucked you so you wouldn’t kill my child, you sadistic bitch.”

Amy wasn’t even sure if the ground was underneath her anymore.

She’d done what Jess had said. She’d trusted Jess. And now—Jess was her _handler_? Jess had been with _Emma_? Jess had been _pregnant_?

“Amy, Amy!”

She wasn’t aware that her legs had given out, but she felt Lucy catch her as she started to fall. Her vision was blurry.

“Amy, Amy what did they do to you—what did you do to her!” Lucy’s voice was a shriek of fury. “What did you do to my sister!”

Jess stepped closer to Emma, who was also starting to fall. “You know what I did, Emma? I lied to you. I fucked you. I did exactly what you and Rittenhouse trained me to do. And I did it so well.” Jess sounded like she was crying. “I was the best monster you ever made.”

Emma was on her knees now, the color draining out of her face.

Then the light died in her eyes.

Amy thought she might throw up, but gravity wasn’t really working anymore.

“Amy, Amy, oh my God, Amy—what did you do to her! What did you do to her!?”

“Relax, princess, it’s just shock. She’s in shock.”

Jess’s face swam into view. She looked so soft. So loving. “Hey, baby. C’mere. Just sit with me and breathe, okay?”

“Lucy!” It was Flynn. He sounded very far away. “We have to get Wyatt back to the bunker, he needs help.”

“Just sit with me,” Jess said soothingly. “Just sit with me and breathe. It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

“Bandage him—”

“I can carry him—”

“Wyatt, Wyatt—”

“Do you even care that he’s hurt? He’s your husband Jess, for fuck’s sake—”

“Yeah, my husband who’s been fucking the two of you.”

“Oh like you were any better—”

“Flynn, please, please, not now, we have to get him—Amy, Amy what did they to do you, Amy…”

Lucy was crying, clutching at her, tearing her away from Jess. “Amy, I’m so sorry, Amy… Amy I love you, Amy, stay with me, Amy…”

“I killed her,” Amy blurted out. “I shot her. She’s dead.”

Then she passed out.


	15. Chapter 15

Amy was put under sedatives. They didn’t really have a choice, Agent Christopher said, once she woke up after being passed out and started hyperventilating. Neither Lucy nor Jess could calm her down.

“She’s been through the wringer,” Agent Christopher said. “She should be in intensive therapy, not here.”

“Rittenhouse will come after both of us,” Jess told her. “We have nowhere else.”

“I’m not letting her out of my sight,” Lucy added. “Never again.”

Wyatt was okay, but confined to bed rest for a long time.

When everyone was well enough to be awake and in the same room together, Agent Christopher called a meeting. “No more lies,” she said. Jess wanted to tell her where she could stick her firm mom voice, but she was on thin ice as it was.

Amy was propped up, sitting next to Lucy. Jess didn’t—couldn’t—look at her.

She told them all what happened, slowly, clinically. How she had been unable to kill someone she loved, even if she was no longer _in_ love with him. How she had to stay loyal to protect herself and her child once she realized she was pregnant.

“And the child?” Agent Christopher asked. “What happened to it?”

Jess tried not to look at Wyatt. She didn’t want to see his face.

She took a deep breath.

“Rittenhouse—Emma—had a new strategy for the sleeper agents. She wanted people who were truly loyal to Rittenhouse and to her, people who would devote their entire lives to the cause, not just a few years. People we didn’t have to coerce or blackmail or threaten.

“Children. Children raised in the past, raised in Rittenhouse completely. Born back in time, proper certificates and everything. They would be placed with the right families, ensure that in case the older sleeper agent failed there was another person to help smooth the way…” Jess swallowed.

“I was sent back to the 1950s. I couldn’t go out on missions for Rittenhouse while obviously pregnant, and Amy couldn’t know so I couldn’t stay with her. I got a job in the records office and was told which couple to give my baby to when the time came.”

She had given birth alone in her apartment. No hospital. No one to ask questions or ask for her to record a birth certificate.

It had been painful, to say the least. Gripping the edges of the tub, fabric stuffed into her mouth so the neighbors wouldn’t ask questions when they heard her screaming. She’d been bloody and bruised and in so much pain she almost passed out, but then she’d heard her cries.

Her baby.

Her Joy.

“That was what I named her,” Jess told them. “Joy.”

She’d been so small, so terribly small and helpless. And Jess had loved her with all of her heart.

“I was supposed to give the baby to a Rittenhouse couple. But instead I gave her to some people I knew I could trust.”

Mr. and Mrs. Ferris were the parents of Miss Ferris, Jess’s first grade teacher. She had adored Miss Ferris. Miss Ferris had been the only one in Jess’s life to distrust her brother’s miraculous recovery, the people that Jess’s family started spending time with. She was the one who had told Jess, “if you ever need help, even if it seems like nobody can help or nobody will understand, you come to me, okay Jess?”

Miss Ferris had always talked about what an influence her father had been on her life. People who had raised someone like Miss Ferris had to be good.

So Jess had turned up on their doorstep.

“I’m so sorry,” she’d stuttered. “It’s just—Mr. Ferris doesn’t probably remember me but I was in his class as a kid and I—he was so kind and I have nowhere else to go, and the baby—”

They had swallowed her story hook, line, and sinker. Abandoned by a faithless husband, without a job, unable to care for the baby, if they would only please, as the only people of kindness she could remember, hold onto little Joy until Jess could come back for her?

Walking away from her newborn child had been the hardest thing that Jess had ever had to do. She’d thought she’d known what doing hard things was. Lying to Wyatt. Kidnapping Jiya. Sleeping with Emma. Manipulating Amy, lying to her, never telling her that she loved her because she had to keep some kind of distance because she’d have to say goodbye and it would be easier if Amy thought Jess was a bitch who’d never loved her—

“Jess?” Agent Christopher said quietly. “Are you okay?”

Jess closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again.

“Yes. I’m fine, thank you. I left the baby with the couple, and then I went to the house of the Rittenhouse couple.”

Leaving Joy. Walking away. Feeling that tether unravel. Feeling like she was leaving her true self behind, her heart, her everything, wishing she could run back and take her baby back into her arms.

“They were expecting me, with the baby. I think they were told that I would show up when it was close to my time to go into labor so that they could help me through it. I killed them.”

It was stupidly easy.

“I kept my job at the records office so that I could register their deaths as accidents, a car crash, and say that their child was placed in the foster system. Emma had no way of knowing the truth, she didn’t know I was working at the records’ office. I think she assumed that I’d slept with someone to take care of things.”

She couldn’t really complain if Emma thought of her as a whore. She’d done a lot to cultivate that image, and to convince Emma that Jess would happily do anything with her, for her.

“When I got back…”

She’d wanted to go to Amy. She’d just wanted to go to Amy and cry. But she’d had to report to Emma.

“…I asked Emma what happened to my daughter. If she’d had a good life. And Emma—she lied to me. Told me some bullshit story with a straight face.”

It had been a struggle to keep from letting her rage show on her face. How stupid did Emma think Jess was?

“And you didn’t tell Wyatt about this?” Agent Christopher asked. “You were already in contact with him by that point.”

“I couldn’t have gotten to him. I didn’t have the time machine on me, I was dropped off and then picked up one month after my pregnancy was supposed to be over.”

“You could have told him where the child was and when.”

“Forgive me, but none of you are known for being subtle. And I’m not trusting my daughter in anyone’s hands except my own.”

She moved on after that. Explained how she had tried to undo the manipulation she’d done to Amy. Trying to fix things. Knowing in the back of her mind the fate that Emma had in store.

Lucy was white-faced through that part, her lips pressed tightly together.

“You made her hate me,” Lucy whispered at the end of it.

“You didn’t help,” Jess shot back. “Keeping her in the dark, never telling the truth, then running away—”

“Ladies,” Agent Christopher said sharply.

Silence reigned long enough for everyone to feel contrite.

Agent Christopher sighed. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do…”

Jess didn’t much care how much house arrest she was under, or how much she had to do to redeem herself. All she cared about was getting her daughter back and making things up to Amy.

When Agent Christopher finished, people dispersed. Jiya, Rufus and Mason got the hell out of dodge, while Lucy sat with Amy and Christopher escorted Wyatt back to the med room. Flynn hovered in the corner, arms folded, like Lucy’s guardian devil.

Jess looked over at Amy for the first time since they’d started this whole thing. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Amy gave her an attempt at a smile. “I knew you were hiding stuff. I guess I didn’t realize how much.”

“Amy.” She reached over to take her hand, but Amy moved it away. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

 _Sorry_. An inadequate word. Small, pathetic, unable to explain the depth and breadth of the chasm that Jess felt when she looked at Amy’s face.

“I think I need some time,” Amy said, her voice very quiet and very small.

“Of course.” She couldn’t expect Amy to forgive her right away. Of course she would need… time. “I’ll just… leave you with your sister, then.”

Jess couldn’t quite make herself smile as she stood up and walked out. She’d brought this on herself, she knew. She’d known that this was coming.

Didn’t make it all hurt any less.


	16. Chapter 16

Jess had lied to her.

Jess had _lied_ to her.

Jess had lied to _her_.

 _Jess_.

Amy stared down at her hands. Hands that had held a gun. That had shot Emma, because Jess had told her to and she’d trusted Jess beyond all reason and beyond all thought.

“Hey.”

Amy looked over and saw that Lucy was still sitting there.

“Hey.”

Lucy cleared her throat. “I. I wanted. To talk? If… if you wanted?”

Did she want to talk to Lucy?

“Are you going to apologize?”

Lucy closed her eyes, as if the words had given her physical pain. “Yes. Of course I am. But…” She opened her eyes again. “Amy why?”

“Why?” Amy could hear how tired her voice sounded. She wanted to be angry, to muster up the strength for that, but she was so tired. So very tired. “Do you want me to write it all down for you?”

“I meant why did you… would you have shot me?” Lucy whispered. “If Jess hadn’t told you differently, would you have killed me?”

Lucy’s voice was horribly calm, measured, as if this wasn’t the first time that someone she loved had betrayed her so thoroughly.

Amy considered the question. If Jess hadn’t told her to shoot Emma instead—would she have shot Lucy?

In the moment on the porch, with Lucy leaving her and still not explaining anything, when her heart was full of anger and betrayal and her mouth was full of blank smoke rage—in that moment, she might have done it.

But in the park, it was all confusion, and she hadn’t even known which end was up, and Lucy had been scared for her.

“I don’t know,” Amy said at last. “I don’t think so. But you don’t really know, do you? Until the moment? You can say you’ll do one thing and that’s the way it has to be but then in the moment… you find yourself doing something else.”

Lucy’s eyes were bright with tears. “Yes,” she said, and Amy had the sudden swift feeling that Lucy understood exactly what you meant. “You never know what you’ll do in the moment.”

She took Amy’s hands. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to protect you. I thought—if I told you everything that you would think I was crazy and that you would tell the wrong people and get into trouble.”

“Time travel is… pretty big.” Honestly, it didn’t feel quite as big as the fact that Jess and Lucy had both been keeping so much from her. “I can see why it would be hard for you to tell me about it.”

“I should have told you anyway,” Lucy said. She was talking to Amy’s hands, looking at where their fingers intertwined. “I should have told you what was going on in my life. I wanted to keep you safe but instead I… I put distance between us and I can see how you could see my actions as selfish. I was thinking only about the problems that I was having and I wasn’t thinking about how alone you felt. And I’m so sorry for that. Amy I’ll—I’ll do anything I can to fix that. Because…”

Lucy started crying properly. “In—on our f-first mission I, I came back and you—you didn’t exist. Nobody knew who you were, Mom had never married Dad and it turned out we have different fathers but anyway she never met him and so you were never born and I—and then I came back from our next mission and you were h-home again and I—”

Amy could remember Lucy coming back and hugging her tightly, crying, how Lucy had been hovering around her for a while.

“—and I didn’t do anything with that gift. With you, you’d been given back to me and I wasted my time with you and I know the world is at stake but you… you are what we’re fighting for. Our families, the people we love, that’s who we fight for. And I should’ve done more to show you how much I care.”

Amy let Lucy gather her up into her arms. “I love you so much, Ames,” Lucy whispered. “I love you more than anything.”

“Even more than those two men hanging around you like sad puppy dogs?” Amy teased.

Lucy just held her tighter. “More than anyone. You’re my baby sister and you always will be.”

Amy felt something warm splashing onto her face and realized that it was her, that she was crying too. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see—I was so stupid and blind.”

She started crying so hard she was hiccupping. “I t-thought she loved me and that nobody else loved me and I—I was so alone and you felt so far away and Mom was dying and she was right there and she l-lied to me and—”

Everything was spilling out of her all at once, a jumble of words that probably didn’t make any sense, but Lucy held her through the whole thing, shushing her quietly, soothing her. It was like when she was little and would have nightmares and would crawl into Lucy’s bed and Lucy would hold her and sing lullabies.

“I almost killed you,” Amy whispered. “I said I hated you.”

“Forgiven,” Lucy told her. Her voice was firm. “All gone. In the past. I’ve got you now. You’re safe with me.”

Amy didn’t want to tell her that Jess had said the same things. _I’ve got you. You’re safe with me_.

But she had her sister back. She supposed that was a start.


	17. Chapter 17

Seeing as Jiya wouldn’t talk to her, Rufus looked like he wanted to throttle her and Lucy was pretending she didn’t exist, Jess thought it was a good time to talk to Wyatt.

To answer his question.

Flynn was sitting by his bed, quietly talking with Wyatt when she entered. She actually didn’t know if Wyatt had done it, if he’d been brave enough to tell Flynn and Lucy how he felt. But from the way Flynn was looking at him, Jess knew Wyatt would have anything he wanted if only he would ask.

The moment she entered Flynn stood up, putting himself between Jess and Wyatt.

Jess rolled her eyes. “Stand down, Cujo. I just want to talk to him.”

Wyatt touched Flynn’s wrist. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”

Flynn shoved his way past her, his message clear: hurt Wyatt, and she’d have six feet of righteously furious Croatian war vet on her hands.

Jess took up Flynn’s chair. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I got shot.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“We knew it was a possibility, with you and Emma there.” Wyatt grimaced as he shifted, sitting up further. “We just didn’t expect her to spot us so damn quickly.”

Jess cleared her throat. “So. Joy.”

Wyatt stiffened. “Joy.”

“…do you like the name?”

Wyatt gave a wet laugh. “The name—yes, Jess, I like the name.”

“Good.” Jess nodded. “Good because, um, I know I didn’t ask you and I could have at some point so. Just wanted to check on that.”

“You leave our daughter in the 1950s after giving birth _alone_ and you’re asking me if I like the name you chose?” Wyatt sounded close to hysterical.

Jess held in her sigh. “Dammit, Wyatt, I’m trying to apologize here.”

Wyatt slumped back against the pillows.

Jess drew in a shaky breath. “I knew if I told you what I had to do with our baby that you wouldn’t let me. But it was the only way to keep her safe and out of Rittenhouse’s hands.”

She could still picture Emma’s placid, lying face when Jess had come back to the present and asked what sort of life her child had led.

_She was a loyal Rittenhouse agent, Jess. She lived a good life. Her name was Ruth, I have some pictures if you’d like._

Lying cold-hearted snake. Jess had hated Emma in that moment. Before, Emma had been someone to fear. An inconvenience. An annoyance, even. But oh, after that, Jess had hated her with every inch of her twisted heart.

If Emma’d had the courage, the honor to tell her, “I’m sorry, your daughter was lost to the foster system after a car crash,” then Jess could have at least held onto some kind of respect for her.

But no. Emma had lied to her, to placate her.

Well, good riddance and fuck her.

“Wyatt—we can go back for her. She’d be a couple months old but… but surely it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?” Jess was appalled to feel her eyes getting warm and her eyesight blurring. “We—we can still have our baby. She’s so beautiful, Wyatt, she’s—she’s everything.”

He looked over at her, hope and pain making the lines on his face deepen. “We can go back for her?”

Jess nodded, taking his hand. “Yes. Yes, we can go back. We can get her. We just need to go back ahead of when I left.”

Wyatt hastily wiped at his eyes. “Sorry.”

“No, no, you’re fine.” Jess laughed, pointing at her own eyes.

“And what’ll… what’ll we do? When we have her?” Wyatt asked.

Jess looked down at their joined hands. “Wyatt I… I care about you. I love you and I always will. But not… not the way that a wife should love her husband. I meant it, when I served you papers. When I tried to walk away. I don’t want to be married to you anymore because as much as I love you, I’m not in love with you. And I think there are two people who can give you what you really need better than I can.”

Wyatt looked away, his eyes going dark. Jess squeezed his hand. “No. No, don’t do that. Wyatt, we’re time travelers. We live in a hidden bunker. How crazy are our lives going to get before you accept that all that matters is if you love them?”

Wyatt looked back at her, his eyes rimmed red. “I hear my dad,” he admitted with a croak. “Every time I want—and there’ve been times where I think one of them almost offered, almost—asked me to come to bed with them and I—but I can hear him in my head, Jess, and I just get so fucking nauseous I could vomit—”

Jess moved to sit on the bed, gathering him to her, holding him. Wyatt let out a single, wracking sob, his face buried into her shoulder.

“That man was a rat bastard,” Jess whispered. “Nothing he says should be listened to. Nothing. They love you, Wyatt, I can see it in their eyes. Who doesn’t want to be loved? Huh? You gonna throw that away?”

“What, like you did?” Wyatt asked, pulling back a little. “You knew she’d hate you when she found out all you did to her. The only chance you had was telling her yourself, before it all went down. And you didn’t.”

It felt like someone had taken a hold of her heart and squeezed it. “If I told her everything beforehand she would’ve been too upset and confused. Emma would’ve seen it. She had to go in blind, she had to go in trusting me.”

“So you defeated Emma and got Amy safe but you lost her.”

“That’s what you do when you love someone, Wyatt, you don’t do what you want, you do what they need. Emma needed to die so our baby could be safe, so Amy could be safe, and if that means she hates me then that’s fine.”

Jess didn’t realize how raw her voice sounded until she saw the sympathy that slid across Wyatt’s face. She turned away. “Don’t—don’t pity me, for the love of God.”

There was a long, long pause. Then Wyatt said,

“You know how much of a jerk I was to Lucy.”

Jess nodded.

“And you know Flynn and I got into a fistfight?”

Jess nodded.

“It was my fault there was a fight, by the way.”

“I’m the one who stole the Lifeboat.”

“I’m the one who suspected you were Rittenhouse and didn’t say anything.”

Jess fixed her hair, if only to give herself something to do so she didn’t keep staring at her hands like an idiot.

“They forgave me. They—they let me apologize, they let me make it right, and I… I’d take a bullet, Jess, God I’d take anything and everything for them and they gave me a goddamn second chance, somehow, even after I’d been the biggest dickhead. I wasn’t even trying to do what was right by the people I loved, I was trying to do whatever I wanted.

“If you… you were trying to do what was right. You saw your mistakes and you tried to fix them and that’s fucking hard. I know it was hard for me. Even just admitting that you were wrong and that you fucked it all up is hard. And so I think that if you—if you went to her, that she’d forgive you. If she’s anything like her sister, she’ll forgive you.”

Jess looked up at him. She didn’t know if Wyatt was right. She’d broken Amy down, sought her out at her most vulnerable and used that to her advantage, manipulated her and messed her up until Amy was a shell of herself.

How could anyone forgive that?

But oh, Wyatt, with his faith in people and his soft puppy heart underneath all that swagger.

She leaned in, pressing their foreheads together. “I love you.”

“I love you.”

“Do you think we could do it? Be friends?”

Wyatt squeezed her hand. “Yeah. I think we can.”


	18. Chapter 18

Amy heard the door open just as she was about to turn the shower off. “Yo, someone’s in here!”

“I, uh, I know.”

She turned to see Jess standing there, eyes carefully averted, her arms folded in front of herself like a shield.

“Oh.”

Jess gave an awkward half wave, sticking her arm up but still looking at the tiles on the floor. “I didn’t know where else to talk to you that was private.”

It was true. Lucy was glued to Amy’s side, only leaving for missions. Flynn and Wyatt were being good about it and weren’t complaining that their bedmate was now sleeping with Amy half the time.

They couldn’t really complain anyway when they were still somehow finding time to bang each other front back and sideways, if the insane amount of hickeys that Lucy was sporting were any indication. “It’s the honeymoon stage,” Jiya had said.

“ _This_ is their honeymoon stage?” Rufus had shot back. “Then what the hell were the last three months?”

“They weren’t actually fucking during that time, babe. I’ve seen more touching in Regency dramas.”

“I’m going to start taking Xanax or something.”

But if Jess had wanted to talk to Amy in all these weeks, she sure hadn’t given Amy any indication. Jess was being grilled constantly by Denise for Rittenhouse information or being used on missions as another gun since Wyatt was still too injured to be out in the field.

(Didn’t stop him from having sex, apparently, but it wasn’t like Amy was envious or anything. It wasn’t like she got to watch a happy couple and a happy triad and a happy Denise who went home to her happy wife and feel the sharp, bitter bile rising in her throat.)

Amy folded her own arms, feeling exposed in a way she never used to with Jess. “So, what did you come here to say?”

Jess finally looked up at her, into Amy’s eyes. Amy was startled to see the red rings around Jess’s eyes, the smudges of darkness underneath them. It was like a curtain had been drawn back and she was seeing the raw wound.

“I used you,” Jess told her. “I tried to fix it, because I felt awful for it and I knew it was wrong but I did, I did do it. I turned you against your sister and I lied to you and I manipulated you and trying to make up for it without even telling you what I did wrong was probably even worse. Trying to… manipulate someone back into independence, I mean, two wrongs don’t make a right, yeah?”

Jess gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Anyway I—I just, I told everyone the facts but I never told you I was sorry and I am.” Her voice was a whisper. “Amy, ba—I’m so, I’m so sorry.”

“You got what you wanted,” Amy replied. Baby Joy was probably sleeping on Wyatt’s chest, her favorite napping place. Everyone in the bunker doted on her, Amy included. It was hard not to, with her big blue eyes and little button nose.

Jess shook her head, tears standing in her eyes. “No,” she shook her head. “No, Amy, God no. I want—I love my baby. She’s my _baby_. My—my perfect, my precious—and she makes me so happy, she does. But she’s not all that I wanted. I wanted you, too.”

“You wanted the scared little girl who worshipped you, who would do anything you told her.”

“No.” Jess’s voice rang across the tiles and she strode over, her arms unfolding as she pointed angrily at the floor. “No, I never wanted that, that was a shell of you, I wanted _you_ , Amy, I wanted the woman who held me when I had given up my baby and had to travel in a fucking time machine days after giving birth and killing two people. I was gone for months and all I could think about besides keeping Joy safe was coming back to you. I _missed_ you. You are so much more than I made you to be and I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you if I have to but do not ever, for one goddamn second, think I preferred the shell I turned you into to the—the vibrant, the beautiful, all of you.”

They were standing only a few feet away from each other now. The water was still running and Amy was probably going to get lectured for wasting it, but she almost couldn’t feel it anymore.

“I love you,” Jess whispered. “I—I didn’t say it because, because I thought if you thought that I didn’t, you’d move on, and you’d be okay but I—I need you to know the truth. I love you, I did love you, I never lied about any of it and… fuck…”

Jess angrily wiped at her eyes. “Feels like I’m fucking doing nowadays is crying.”

Amy laughed, pointing at her own wet face. “Join the club.”

“Oh c’mon, Amy, you’re standing in the shower, you can pretend it’s just the water and you throw that excuse away? For shame.”

Amy smiled, and Jess smiled back, and for a moment, everything was normal again.

Then Jess said again, quietly, “I love you. I didn’t betray Rittenhouse for the good of the world, or for Wyatt, or even for me. I did it for you and for my daughter. That’s all. I just… needed you to know that.”

She turned to go, and it was so stupid and nothing was all hunky-dory between them again, they still had to work out a lot and talk through a lot but Amy was so, so tired of being at odds with the people she loved, and she missed Jess like a fucking limb.

So she grabbed her arm and spun Jess back around and kissed her.

Jess made a startled noise against Amy’s mouth and went stiff in surprise, pelted by the warm water, but then she was kissing back, fierce and devouring, her arms wrapping around Amy and if Jess’s hands shook as she held her and the kiss tasted salty, well, Amy wouldn’t tell anyone.


	19. Chapter 19

_One Year Later_

Amy opened her eyes slowly, becoming aware of her surroundings by bits and pieces. She was a little cold, no warmth pressed against her back. But she didn’t hear any pounding footsteps, no alarm that said that they had to go after Rittenhouse.

She glanced at the clock. She’d been allowed to sleep in today.

Amy got up, getting dressed immediately in case the alarm went off. She rarely went out on missions, holding down the fort with Jiya at the computers, but it paid to be prepared. She was a lot better with computers than she’d ever thought. Jiya and Mason had been teaching her. Mason was so pleased to have a new student, someone to mentor, now that Rufus was more independent and more than capable of handling his own science.

As she exited the bedroom and walked down the hall, she could hear voices. None raised in anger or panic, so that was all good. As she got closer to the common area, she could smell food and her stomach rumbled, yearning for breakfast.

She turned the corner and stepped into the room.

“Aw, come here,” Lucy was cooing, taking Joy from Wyatt’s hands. “Is your daddy being an asshole again? Don’t you listen to him.”

“Hey—” Wyatt protested.

“You were being an asshole,” Jess said dryly, walking around the table to deposit a bottle of milk in front of Lucy, who used it to start feeding Joy. “Thank God you married two people who actually know what the hell they’re doing.”

Wyatt pointed at Flynn, who was standing over by the stove, flipping what looked like bacon. “Flynn’s been teaching her swear words in Croatian!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Flynn replied in his _I can keep you from getting laid_ tone of voice.

Rufus leaned in from his spot where he’d been watching Jiya play Pillars of Eternity on her computer. “If you ever get sick of having five parents,” he whispered to Joy, “just let me know. I’ll help pay for the therapy.”

“You hush,” Lucy replied.

Jess looked up and saw Amy standing there in the doorway. She smiled, still a little tentative. Amy wished she could take those misgivings away, but she knew that the only way to do that was through time. Time and reminding Jess periodically that she had been forgiven.

Not that it had been easy. Denise had in fact gotten a therapist to come down and give them all sessions. There’d been fights—mostly between Jess and someone else. Flynn and Jess had gone at it a hell of a lot, finding ways to push each other’s buttons, Jess feeling judged and Flynn feeling protective of Lucy and Wyatt. Rufus and Jiya hadn’t trusted her, not by a long shot, and Lucy had gotten pissed as all get out when she’d learned that Amy was giving Jess a second chance.

That fight had, arguably, been the nastiest.

Surprisingly, Wyatt was the one who had gotten along with Jess the best. Not that he hadn’t struggled. There’d been a few fights between him and Lucy and Flynn that had made Amy want to dive for cover.

But slowly, day by day, they’d all gotten better.

Ironically, it helped that they were fighting Rittenhouse. Nothing like someone saving your ass a few times in a firefight to build trust, and Jess had proven herself valuable both for information and with a gun.

The turning point had come about six months in, when Flynn had gotten injured and had to sit out the next mission. Jess had gone with Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus. They’d gotten into a fight and an enemy got the drop on Wyatt. Jess had taken a risky shot and got the guy in the head, even though it had left her open to being smacked with a folding chair (long story). Then later on, when Lucy had gotten knocked off a pier into the water, Jess had dived in after her.

Amy had noticed that after that, Flynn stopped picking fights with Jess.

With Flynn finally warming to her, and Rufus seeing for himself that Jess was perfectly willing to make a few sacrifices to help out the team, everyone had started to calm down a bit.

Denise, Amy was sure, had gone home and had a celebratory drink or five since it made her job ten times easier when everyone wasn’t glaring daggers at each other.

Amy had been… unsure of Jess, at first. She’d still loved her, loved her because she didn’t know how to stop. But what if Jess had been manipulating her again? How could she tell?

The therapist had helped with that, pointing out unhealthy behavior so that Amy could recognize it if Jess started showing it.

But it had still taken a while for Amy to come to trust Jess the way that she once had. And even then it was different. She would never be so blindly trusting of anyone again—but perhaps trust wasn’t supposed to work like that. Even with trust, her decisions had to be her own. They had to be what she wanted, not something she did just because someone told her to.

But now… it was all in the past.

Now, she got to sleep with Jess in their room, Joy sleeping in a little crib that Denise had brought. Now, she got to kiss Jess hello and goodbye when they boarded the Lifeboat. Now, she had marathons of horrible reality TV with Jiya and Lucy. Now, she had Flynn teaching her how to fight, how to defend herself. Now, she had Wyatt agonizing with her over the best presents to buy Joy because Jess, Lucy, and Flynn all claimed that she was getting spoiled but Wyatt and Amy firmly disagreed and thought that really, a child could never have too many stuffed animals.

Now she had a family. Friends. People who thought she was special.

And she had Jess, who every morning would look at her like she was looking at her now, walking over to her, eyes lit up like Amy was the only person in the room.

“Morning baby,” Jess murmured, wrapping her arms around Amy’s waist and kissing her on the forehead. “You sleep okay?”

Amy tucked her face into Jess’s neck and breathed her in. “Yeah, I slept good.”

“Amy will take my side,” Wyatt told Lucy. “She always does.”

“Wow, using my sister against me,” Lucy said dryly. “Real original.”

“I will separate you two,” Flynn said. “Amy, you want eggs?”

“Please.”

Amy let herself be led over to the table by Jess, sitting in Jess’s lap rather than in her own chair. Lucy passed Joy over to her and Amy took her happily. “Morning, sweet thing.” Joy was getting bigger every damn day. Soon she’d be talking. She wasn’t walking yet, something that Jess was secretly fretting about, but Amy had confidence that all was fine.

Jess would often wake up with nightmares—and her most persistent one was that something had gone wrong with Joy when they’d taken her through time. She’d only been a month old when they’d taken her back to the present in the Lifeboat, surely that had to do something to her, Amy what if she doesn’t talk, what if she has visions like Jiya but can’t control them, what if, what if…

But Joy was squirming happily in Amy’s arms and Amy didn’t see any reason to worry. She was a happy, healthy baby. But then, despite being Joy’s stepmom (one of them, dear God, the poor child was going to have a huge mess on her hands when she was older), she hadn’t been there like Jess had. She hadn’t given birth all alone and then had to abandon her child.

So all she could do was comfort Jess when the nightmares came.

“Were you a good girl who let Mama sleep through the night?” Amy cooed.

Joy burbled at her. Amy’s heart twisted. She hadn’t given birth to her, no, and she didn’t love Joy the same way that Jess did, but that didn’t mean she loved her less. Joy was hers, and Wyatt’s, and Jess’s, and Flynn’s, and Lucy’s.

Although Amy suspected that Uncle Rufus and Aunt Jiya were probably going to be favorites, given how drama free the two managed to be. Joy even had Mason wrapped around her teeny tiny fingers.

Jess rested her chin on Amy’s shoulder as Flynn started distributing the food. Lucy promptly stole Wyatt’s bacon off his plate, winking at him and blowing him a kiss when he protested. “Are you happy?” Jess whispered.

It had taken some time. Not everything could be forgiven with one apology. Not everything could be fixed with a snap of the fingers. But they were beating Rittenhouse, now that Jess was on their side and Emma was gone, the organization’s leadership in shambles and divided. They were together, and Jess loved her, told her so every chance she got. She was with Lucy, with her sister, and Lucy was happy too—if the way she smiled at Flynn and Wyatt was any indication.

It didn’t look anything like what she had pictured, but Amy finally had what she had wanted. She was important, and loved.

She turned her head to kiss Jess softly. “I am,” she promised her.

At last, at _last_ , she was.


End file.
